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PRESENT-DAY THOUGHTS 



By the same Author. 

LESSONS OF MIDDLE AGE : With Some Account of 

Various Cities and Men. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
The RECREATIONS of a COUNTRY PARSON. First 

Series. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. Second Series, 3s. 6d. 
The COMMONPLACE PHILOSOPHER in TOWN and 

COUNTRY. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
LEISURE HOURS in TOWN. 

Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
The AUTUMN HOLIDAYS of a COUNTRY PARSON. 

Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
The CRITICAL ESSAYS of a COUNTRY PARSON. 

Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 



SUNDAY AFTERNOONS at the PARISH CHURCH of 
a UNIVERSITY CITY. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 

The GRAVER THOUGHTS of a COUNTRY PARSON. 
First Series. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. Second Series, 
3s. 6d. 

COUNSEL and COMFORT SPOKEN from a CITY 
PULPIT. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 

CHANGED ASPECTS of UNCHANGED TRUTHS : 
Memorials of St Andrews Sundays. Crown 8vo. 
3s. 6d. 

SEASIDE MUSINGS on SUNDAYS and WEEK-DAYS. 
3 s. 6d. 



Present- Day Thoughts 



fHEtnorials oi St Sntirttos Suntiags 



BY THE AUTHOR OF 



THE RECREATIONS OF A COUNTRY PARSON 



/f 4 /<• H- £ 



cry 



///- 




NEW EDITION 



LONDON 

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
1874. 



TED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY 
EDINBURGH AND LONDON 




I. 


THE DEPRECIATION OF PUBLIC WORSHIP, 


PAGE 
I 


II. 


THE LIVING DOG AND THE DEAD LION, . 


16 


HI. 


THE PLACE OF RITUAL, .... 


3 2 


IV. 


REST, . . ... 


49 


V. 


THE VOLUNTEER ARMY, 


65 


VI. 


THE UNCHANGING SAVIOUR, . 


81 


VII. 


THE PECULIAR PEOPLE, ... 


96 


VIII. 


THE NEEDLESS SHAME, .... 


112 


IX. 


THE POSSIBILITIES OF HUMAN NATURE, . 


130 


X. 


THE EXAMPLE OF CHRIST, 


144 


XI. 


THE TWILIGHT MEDITATION, . 


1 59 


XII. 


A GOOD MAN, 


r 75 


XIII. 


THE GREAT CHANGE, .... 


192 


XIV. 


THE GLORY OF THE CROSS, 


209 


XV. 


THE PEACEFUL PILGRIMAGE, . 


226 


XVI. 


THE UNSEEN GOT3, .... 


243 


XVII. 


JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH, 


260 


XVIII. 


THE WAY TO ZION, .... 


277 


XIX. 


THIS LIFE AND THE NEXT SOBERLY 






WEIGHED, 


293 



THE DEPRECIATION OF PUBLIC 
WORSHIP. 



8< Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the 
manner of some is." — Heb. x. 25. 

ALL over this country, you may find here and 
there large buildings of peculiar appearance, 
not fitted nor intended to be used for secular or busi- 
ness purposes. There is a great number of them : 
some of them have been raised at great cost; and 
they would be of no use at all if all we had to do in 
this world were to get food to eat and raiment to wear 
and a home to live in for our children and ourselves. 
They are appointed, these buildings, for the public 
worship of God. It is intended that people should 
meet together in them for common prayer and praise : 
likewise to listen to exhortation spoken by men set 
apart and trained for that purpose. Such buildings, 
and the services conducted within them, are regarded 
as a needful part of the organisation of all religious 
communities. In this country, the meetings in these 
buildings are practically confined to one day of the 
week : and to a small portion even of that day. There 



2 The Depreciation of 



are a hundred and sixty-eight hours in the week : and 
those are regarded as very good church-goers who 
spend three of these hours in public worship, — that 
is to say, who go to church twice each Sunday. 

Going at the appointed hour (which may be easily 
ascertained) into very many of these places set apart 
for public worship, you will find present in them a 
mere fraction of the number of people they could 
contain. And (what is a much more serious consi- 
deration) you will gradually come to know that a very 
large proportion of the population never enters any 
place of public worship at all \ or attends public 
worship very rarely and irregularly. Yet public wor- 
ship is a thing which (to speak generally) concerns all 
men equally. If any man or woman ought to go to 
church, then every man and woman ought to go. 

If it w T ere only that individual places of worship 
were veiy frequently much more than half empty, this 
might show merely that there are too many of them. 
And no doubt, to some extent, this is so. For 
Christian people, though worshipping the same God, 
through the same Mediator, and by the same Blessed 
Spirit, have not been able to agree as to the way 
and fashion in which they shall worship. There 
are diverse ways of worshipping God : and people, 
long accustomed to one way, cannot bear another. 
In one church the ministers who conduct the wor- 
ship wear black robes : in another white robes. In 
one church, the prayers which are to be said have 



Public Worship. 



been agreed upon beforehand, and the minister reads 
them from a printed book : in another church you can 
never know beforehand exactly what the prayers are 
to be. And a very great man, who was also a very 
good man, said that he thought this difference so great 
a difference, that it made it impossible for those who 
preferred the one way to worship habitually with those 
who preferred the other. Then, even when people 
are agreed so far as to worship in precisely the same 
way, they sometimes cannot agree to worship in the 
same building because they think differently upon cer- 
tain points : points not always quite insignificant, yet 
points which no rational being will say can affect a 
man's reception in the other world, or his faithfulness 
purity and kindness in this. Hence, separate places 
of worship are. multiplied beyond the need for them. 
A well-informed writer has lately calculated that in 
this small country at least eight hundred could be 
well spared. There are too many churches, just as 
there are too many bakers, grocers, and drapers ; and 
too many railway trains where there are competing 
lines. Look into the carriages of the railway train, 
and you will see that half the seats in them are empty. 
Each shop could easily do three times the business it 
gets to do. Each does only a fraction of the business 
it could do, and is willing to do. So with places of 
worship. They have outgrown the demand for them. 
It would be easy to point out parishes in which, if 
every man woman and child of the population were 



4 The Depreciation of 



in church at once, hundreds of seats would remain 
unoccupied. 

But it is not an entire explanation of existing facts, 
to say that there are too many places of worship. 
There is something deeper amiss, — amiss, that is, if 
attendance on public ordinances be assumed to be a 
Christian duty; and a thing which, being worthily 
done, will do people good. Even if every soul were 
in church that ought to be, the places of worship in 
Scotland would not be full. But they are made, many 
of them, still emptier by the fact, that out of the three 
millions of this country, there are scores and scores 
of thousands who never attend public worship at all : 
and that of those who claim to be church-going people, 
a great many do not attend by any means regularly. 
There is a lapsed class, as it has been called, who do 
not attend on public ordinances because they do not 
think of religious duty at all : because, I venture not 
to say through whose fault, they have, though living 
in what we term a Christian land, sunk into utter 
heathenism and godlessness. There is a smaller class, 
just at the opposite end of the scale socially and in- 
tellectually, of persons who are irregular in attending 
church, and who in some cases have entirely ceased 
to attend church, because they have grown away from 
that kind of thing, — grown out of liking for it and 
sympathy with it \ — because they have come to feel 
as if they were beyond the need of it, — that it is all 
very good and profitable for others, but not for such 



Public Worship. 



5 



as they. Now it is not to either of these classes of 
people that I desire to address myself this afternoon. 
I desire rather to speak to the large intermediate 
class, which includes Christian people who attend on 
public worship with all regularity ; and which includes, 
too, those church-goers who are careless and irregular 
in attendance on public worship, just from lack of 
heart and interest in the whole thing : just because 
they do not enjoy being in church when they go, and 
do not feel as if they got any good by going. It 
seems as if the counsel in my text, which seems 
beyond all question to refer, to the ordinary public 
services of religion, were specially addressed to such 
as neglected these through indifference. In the face 
of our Saviour s promise to be present wherever two 
or three should be gathered in His Name, there 
could hardly be, then, even in the most crotchety, 
any doubt as to the propriety and advantage of the 
duty : and in those days it is not likely that such con- 
siderations as the unpopularity of the preacher, or 
the introduction into worship of rites which some 
disliked, had yet come to have much influence. Let 
me then, with all kindness and faithfulness, say some 
words about this thing : about the duty, and the ad- 
vantage, in the case of all save very exceptional 
people, of a regular attendance on the public worship 
of God. 

This is a matter which I have always shrunk 
from preaching about. Except in a few sentences, 



6 The Depreciation of 



said some weeks since by way of supplement to a 
paper read by command of the Supreme Court of the 
Church, I never have spoken from the pulpit to 
enforce this duty. For I have always held, and often 
said, that the only legitimate and successful way of 
bringing people to church, is by attracting them 
thither; by interesting them in the worship and in 
the sermon. But, though I do not believe it is pos- 
sible, with any satisfactory result, to scold people into 
coming to church ; and though I see, with thankful- 
ness, that a large part of this congregation is very 
regular in attendance on worship ; yet I feel that it 
would be unfaithful to keep silence about a duty 
which some manifestly neglect ; and I cannot but 
remark, with sorrow, that too many among us are 
grievously to blame here. I fear there are some 
among us who think of church as a boy thinks of 
school : it is a holiday to escape it, and they are glad 
of an excuse to do so. Now, my friends, we must 
understand one another here. You will not misinter- 
pret me. There is a special hindrance to any preacher 
in speaking of this duty, in this : that while he may 
think he is actuated by pure zeal for God's worship, 
and by the honest desire to see those in whom he is 
deeply interested doing what is right and good for 
them, some may think he is actuated by selfish mor- 
tification that people are not more interested in his 
instructions; and fancy he is like an actor damped 
by empty benches, or a man in any vocation who feels 



Public Worship. 



/ 



he is failing in it. In our places of worship, the ser- 
vice is so personal • so dependent on the individual 
who conducts it, and who can make it just what he 
pleases \ that we can see here one source of that 
curious feeling, sometimes found in Scotland among 
the less educated, that it is doing a favour to the 
preacher to go and hear him preach : that it is, so to 
speak, patronising his place of business. You remem- 
ber how when that great man Dr Chalmers built a 
church for the poor in Edinburgh, a poor beggar said 
he must go there a day to encourage him. And so. 
no doubt, the poor beggar would encourage the great 
man : though not at all in the way the beggar meant. 
So, no doubt, a hearty and zealous congregation can 
unspeakably cheer the heart and stimulate the ener- 
gies and abilities of their minister : though not at all, 
I humbly trust, on the sordid principle which is level 
to the comprehension of sordid and suspicious natures. 
Now, for various reasons, I am not afraid of this mis- 
conception, here, where I have preached so long. I 
know you will believe that I speak to-day simply from 
a sense of duty, as one deeply feeling that as to God's 
worship we all come short : and that, by God's mercy, 
it may be good and helpful for us all, for once, quietly 
to think over this whole thing. 

My dear friends, there is surely something wrong, 
somewhere, if God's public worship is very disagreeable 
to us : so that our attendance upon it is felt to be an 
irksome task. God forbid that it should be taken for 



8 The Depreciation of 



granted that where this is so, the fault lies of neces- 
sity with the congregation. Where this is so, even in 
exceptional cases, there is reason for most earnest 
searching of heart on the part of the minister : for 
the most careful review, on his part, of the fashion in 
which his public duty is done : for the most solemn 
examination, by him, whether there have been failure 
in labour and study ; in the clear, manful, and kindly 
setting forth of God's truth ; in the devout and wise 
conduct of that most solemn exercise of public prayer. 
In such a case, the preacher may well be led anxiously 
to consider whether he have in any good measure, 
whether he have at all, those gifts and that grace which 
may fit him for that office to which he may have wrongly 
fancied God called him. But in such a case, too, 
there is surely reason for self-examination on the part 
of the congregation, or of the individual worshippers. 
Are you going to church, looking for the right thing ? 
When you are in church, do you wait upon ordinances 
in the right spirit? As public worship must be an 
everyday thing, conducted by a great number of 
ordinary men, it is perfectly plain that you go to 
church looking for the wrong thing, if you go there, 
expecting what you can get only from very exceptional 
men, — exceptionally eminent in strength, and insight, 
and freshness,, and eloquence, and courage, — and 
very likely quite exceptional in the views of truth they 
hold. And as public worship must be joined in by all 
kinds of people ; poor people, and plain people ; 



Public Worship. 



9 



without much culture ; yet with hearts which may be 
stricken with the sense of sin and feel their need of 
the Saviour, hearts which may be pierced through 
with sorrows and feel their need of the Blessed 
Comforter ; and people, too, compelled to worship in 
plain places, which did not cost very much to build, 
and where worship must be kept up cheaply or not at 
all • it is plain you go to church expecting too much, 
if you look for it that in the building, the worship 
and the worshippers, there shall be nothing to jar 
upon refined susceptibilities, — upon the delicate sense 
of what is beautiful and fit in architecture, in music, 
in deportment. Worshipping with the multitude ot 
your fellow-sinners and fellow-sufferers, you must make 
up your mind to worship at some little disadvantage 
in such things as these. Perhaps the disadvantage 
will be abundantly recompensed by something which 
will warm the heart as aesthetics never can. There 
may be, somewhere, such things as genteel churches, 
with genteel services, suited only for genteel people : 
but God forbid that the sacred buildings of the 
National Church should ever be anything other than 
the common meeting-places of rich and poor ! And 
God help us poor Christians in Scotland, if we cannot 
worship worthily unless in Westminster or in Wells ! 

Then such as find they get no pleasure nor profit in 
church, ought to consider whether besides going 
there expecting what they are not likely to get, they 
are not also present there in a wrong spirit. You 



io The Depreciation of 

remember how a great though eccentric genius, dead 
not many years, would not enter even into his closet 
to offer his solitary prayer, without vesting himself in 
a white robe. That was a fancy. But without any 
fancy, we know the garb in which sinners ought to 
worship God. We ought evermore to enter God's 
house, " clothed with humility." We cannot heartily 
wait upon ordinances in a critical spirit. Of course, 
I do not counsel impossibilities : you cannot help 
forming some estimate of what you hear in church as 
you do of what you hear elsewhere : but you know 
what I mean : do not indulge a captious, fault-finding 
spirit, that depreciates the doings of all except your- 
self. And beware, even more, of a cynical spirit ; 
that is grimly amused by the little means that weigh 
with simple folk, to touch and impress. I do not 
counsel impossibilities here either ; nor ask for the 
slightest tolerance for irreverent and vulgar clap-trap. 
I will admit, too, that both prayers and preaching may 
be really so very bad, that the entire service shall be 
simply distressing : and I hope for the day, anticipated 
by the best and wisest of our clergy, when the con- 
gregation shall not be so helplessly in the hands of 
the officiating minister for their common prayers, as 
they are now. But remembering all this, I say that 
if we heartily pray for God's blessing on our worship, 
and come in an earnest spirit, surely we shall seldom 
fail to get some good. Let us fix this in our minds, 
that we come to worship : to stir up the devotion and 



Public Worship. 



1 1 



the better longings of our hearts : to confess sin and 
ask pardon and grace from God, as those who believe 
that if we confess our sins He will forgive our sins, 
and that if we ask for pardon and grace, our asking 
them will bring them. And we do not look, in 
preaching, for more than to be stirred up by way of 
remembrance of what we well know ; — the elementary 
truths of repentance towards God and faith in Christ ; 
— the old story, always fresh if in any way worthily 
told, or the fault is our own. And I am constrained 
to say that the prayers and sermons I hear are gener- 
ally so good, that it is the worshipper's own fault if he 
do not worship with profit. But if it be otherwise, 
then remember that few among us are restricted in 
their choice to a single place of worship. One good 
comes of our unhappy religious divisions ; that we 
may find diversity of gifts, and go where we find what 
reaches us and comesjiome to us and suits us. It is 
no one's duty to attend on ministrations which do not 
interest nor profit : after honest endeavour on the 
worshipper's part to find them and make them interest- 
ing and profitable. But if we find that God's worship 
is a weariness to us, unless it be put in the form of 
an intellectual treat, or an architectural treat, or a 
musical treat ; then, most assuredly, the fault is in 
ourselves : in our own utter lack of that real central 
thing, that spirit of true devotion, without which no 
enjoyment of architecture, music, or preaching, is any 
worship at all. 



1 2 The Depreciation of 



There are certain very simple and obvious truths, 
which yet some people most thoroughly forget, when 
they complain of finding public worship a weariness 
and an infliction : as though that were somebody 
else's fault. And one of these obvious truths is this : 
that if a man feels no real interest or pleasure in 
worshipping God elsewhere, he will not feel these 
either in worshipping God in church. If we do not- 
like to enter into our closet and pray to God alone : 
if it be a mere heartless task to keep up God's wor- 
ship in our family ; what right have we to expect 
that we shall enjoy God's worship when assembled 
in His house ? We have no right whatsoever. But 
we may perhaps fancy we are enjoying that, because 
of a certain pleasurable excitement in us from the 
presence of a multitude : because of attractive acces- 
sories about the worship, which please our taste, and 
touch our sensibilities. All the while, it is not that we 
are in the least degree interested or engrossed in the 
actual, essential worship. We are enjoying art : we 
are enjoying music : we are enjoying the marvellous 
beauty of the mere language of prayer : we are enjoy- 
ing eloquence : there is no more of devotion in the 
case, than would be in a picture-gallery or in an 
opera-house or at a tragedy : There is no religion, 
no worship here : but a vague, composite exaltation 
or excitement, capable of being mistaken for ^uch. 
My friends, I do not want to see our public worship 
made such, that it shall enable an undevout man to 



Pttblic Worship. 



13 



fancy he is worshipping, and enjoying worship. It 
should rather make him feel that there is something 
wrong in him ; something that must first be set right ; 
before that occupation, so pleasant to truly converted 
and regenerated people, can be pleasant to him. It 
should rather make him feel himself an outsider mean- 
while, with no part in the matter • that he may be 
constrained to earnestly seek that he be brought 
within the Fold. I say there is a peril in worship so 
beautiful, that every man will enjoy it though he have 
no religion in his heart. Such a worship is a powerful 
means of self-deception ! It is fitted to enable a man 
to fancy that all is well with him ; when in truth it is 
not so. 

These things are true. I am constrained to say 
them because they are true. And perhaps you may 
give them the more serious consideration, because if I 
were swayed by likings rather than by convictions, I 
might point you in quite another way. I might 
restore this place, if I could, to the glory, without the 
error, of other days. I might provide here, if I could, 
a magnificent church, whose beauty would be a per- 
petual pleasure : a grand and imposing service ; the 
noblest music ; the sublimest prayer and praise. But 
if these outward inducements and attractions made 
some come here regularly who do not come now, or 
some feel a deeper interest in worship than they do 
now, — oh where would be the profit ! Oh what real 
addition of true worship would there be ! There 



14 



The Depreciation of 



might be a great access of pleasurable emotion : a 
great increase of self-deception : a great gathering of 
those light and unstable souls that drift so readily 
away from the church of their fathers : but would 
there be any increase of that real worship in which the 
creature stands face to face with God Almighty ; — in 
which we poor creatures go and ask for what we need, 
with that earnestness which brings it down? Let us 
ever look jealously upon that improvement, however 
great it may aesthetically be, which may help us to 
believe we are worshipping in spirit and in truth, 
when we are not doing so. I say not that such im- 
provements should be rejected : but we must see to 
it that they do not mislead us : we must remember to 
what they might tend. Perhaps, perhaps, — God 
forbid it should be so, — this present longing for a 
more stately ritual, may be nothing better than the 
feeling of a generation in which the old devotion is 
dying out ; and which seeks to stimulate by meretrici- 
ous arts an excitement which may pass for devotion. 
Perhaps, God forbid it, it may signify that we shrink 
from coming into God's very Presence with nothing 
between ; and would fain put something between us 
and Him, — beyond the mediation of our Redeemer ! 
Perhaps our fathers, when they appointed our plain 
service, — holy psalm, humble prayer, God's Word 
read and preached, — were wiser than we. This 
much is certain : that in our public worship we have 
what was helpful and pleasant to better and more 



Pttblic Worship. 



15 



earnest people : surely, my brethren, the fault is in 
ourselves, if it be not so to you and me ! 

How strange, surely, to many, all these things 
which good men have said, about " longing for the 
courts of the Lord:" desiring above all things to 
" dwell in the house of the Lord," and to " inquire 
in His temple ! " How unreal, and out of all expe- 
rience, must seem " How amiable are Thy taber- 
nacles : " and " I have loved the habitation of Thy 
house : " and " I was glad when they said unto me, 
Let us go into the house of the Lord ! " Oh can it 
have been that God's house, then, was perfectly dif- 
ferent from what the church is now ! For they were 
so happy in it, these good people that are gone ; and 
we are so tired ! Oh for an outpouring upon our 
hearts of the Blessed Holy Spirit : Spirit of earnest- 
ness, of faith, of prayer ! And then, there will be no 
more ready excuses, for keeping away from the Place, 
where we get so much good, and feel so peaceful and 
happy. Then, in the plain church, with its simple 
service, though there be little for sense, there will be 
much for the weary, sinful, sorrowful soul. Then, 
when the church-door is opened, on Lord's day or 
week-day, how happy and good to enter in ! There 
will be a glory about the Place, where Christ is : a 
glory about the worship, on which God is looking 
down with pleased eye ! 



II. 



THE LIVING DOG AND THE DEAD LION. 



IFE is a most wonderful thing. It is a far more 



-L/ wonderful thing than we commonly remember 
it to be. Any life is wonderful. It is wonderful, the 
life of a plant. You see it growing up : in so far a 
thing by itself, independent of things round; yet 
rooted to the earth, and fixed to it as if it were a 
part of it Much more wonderful is it, when, through 
the gradations of nature, we arrive at that higher 
development of being that is no longer rooted to the 
earth, but can move of itself, having independent life, 
as an animal has. 

Then we remember this great certainty : that 
though we can do many things, and are learning 
daily to do more, we cannot make or give life. We 
can fashion out a statue, that shall be like a man : 
that shall be far more beautiful and graceful than 
any man. But we cannot give the spark that shall 
make it live. 



" For a living dog is better than a dead lion." — 
Eccles. ix. 4. 




The Living Dog, etc. 



17 



We have, probably, all of us, at some time thought 
a thought something like that in the text : the un- 
utterable superiority of that which has life over that 
which has no life at all. Here is the impassable 
dividing-line of nature : that which parts between the 
living, and the lifeless. A thing with very little life, — 
that is just feebly holding on to life, — may grow great 
and strong : like the feeble spark that may increase 
into a great fire. But you can make nothing of the 
thing that has no life. 

Here is the living dog. The man who wrote this 
text did not mean by the dog what we do : the tried, 
faithful friend and companion of man : honest, affec- 
tionate, true, brave : with nothing of double-facedness, 
with no mean ends to be gained by mean arts, with 
no tendency to silly vapouring about its own wisdom 
and importance : morally far better than very many 
men. He knew the dog only as a prowling beast : a 
wild beast, but the meanest and foulest of all wild 
beasts. And then, by the lion, the man who wrote 
my text meant something quite different from what 
we know the word to mean. He doubtless had in 
his mind the old ideas of courage and nobleness of 
nature : he thought of the king of beasts. He did 
not know that the lion is just a bigger cat ; with all 
the meanness and slinkingness and cowardice of a cat ; 
only with power to do more harm. We should not 
scruple to say that a living dog is better than a living 
lion. But we know what the writer of the text meant 

B 



i S The Living Dog 

He meant that the meanest creature, with life in it, is 
better than the noblest with life gone from it : — gone 
for ever, as life seems to go when it goes. That is 
the idea ; the inexpressible value of life ; the unutter- 
able, unfathomable difference between life and death, 
—between being alive, and being dead. 

You know, — or favoured you are among mortal 
creatures if you do not know, — the awful separation 
that is made when life goes. Weak, weak indeed, 
perhaps, were those who died, in the last hours of 
life : but still they were here, — still they were with us. 
The face was more peaceful and beautiful, perhaps, 
when the last trouble of troublesome life had faded 
from it : but oh the awful gulf in that moment 
made ! There has been no communication since 
then : not a word more. Nothing can reach the ear; 
nothing can catch the eye. The great Atlantic is a 
narrow brook, to the gulf between the dead and the 
living. 

I have said these things by way of introduction : 
but the life of which I desire now to speak to you, as 
my subject to-day, is Spiritual Life: the new and 
better life of God's grace within the soul. I take for 
granted that there is nobody here who doubts that 
this is the only life that is really worth reckoning. 
He only truly lives who has " passed from death 
to life : ;; that is to say, who is a converted, re- 
generated man. Wanting this, we want the only 
life we can take with us into a better world : we want 



and the Dead Lion. 



*9 



the only life that can push us (in any right way) 
through our daily work, and make us able to stand 
against our daily temptations. If we have not been 
(what the New Testament calls) " quickened/' then 
in God's account we are " dead in trespasses and 
sins." 

Now what I wish to do by God's blessing (and I 
am not ashamed to say that I believe there is such a 
thing as God's blessing, and that we can do our work 
better by God's blessing) : — what I wish to do, taking 
the principle in my text for a starting-point, is to show 
How invaluable a thing is even a little of this better 
life : How vast a difference it makes to have even a 
little of this better life : How God's grace in the soul, 
however weak, if we only have it at all, is better than 
all this world's best without it. And I say this is so 
for several reasons. 

First : Because to have this better life, or to want 
it, just makes the difference between being right and 
being wrong. 

Everybody knows that in this world, a hair's-breadth 
sometimes makes the difference between right and 
wrong : yet the difference between right and wrong is 
always a mighty difference. Most of all is that so 
here, when the question is Whether a man be right 
or wrong for eternity? Here, everything turns upon 
it. If we have the life of grace, we are saved. If 
we want the life of grace, we are not saved. The 
question here is of eternal life or death : and it must 



20 



The Living Dog 



be answered by Yes or No. It is not a matter of 
degree. Each one of us who has been offered 
Christ's salvation is either on the one side or the 
other side of the great separating line. We have 
either opened the door when Christ knocked at it, or 
not. We, in our foolishness and self-sufficiency, set- 
ting aside the plain teaching of God's Word, and 
mortally deceiving ourselves, may think the difference 
small : but, believe it, brethren, here are the great 
contrasts of the universe : here are life and death, 
blessing and cursing : here are heaven and hell ! 

These are things that need to be plainly said now. 
Of course, if we do not believe in them, let us say so : 
then let us throw our New Testaments into the fire, 
and range ourselves manfully with other unbelievers. 
But if these things are true, they are tremendously 
true : and we must look them in the face. I often 
think that in these last days, there are certain words 
of an ancient prophet, dead for many ages, that 
express the peculiar characteristic of much of our 
theology, and our religious thinking and feeling ; and 
that set out a danger which we ought to guard 
against. Says the prophet Jeremiah, " They have 
healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, 
saying, Peace, peace ; when there is no peace." Our 
tendency, — and God knows we are all to blame here, 
— is to take things easily : I do not mean in the sense 
of not being readily disquieted or flurried ; but in the 
sense of shutting our eyes against solemn realities, — 



and the Dead Lion. 



21 



and making our belief square with our wishes. All 
our surroundings are a temptation to this. "We live 
in a well-settled country, and in a quiet mode of life : 
we have had no personal experience of wars, or 
political commotion : we have come to like a mild 
thoughtful literature, much of which might perish in 
more turbulent times : and so we affect a mild re- 
ligious belief. "We dwell on God's goodness, and the 
attractions of religion : we keep entire silence on 
certain doctrines which are written in every Christian 
creed : we think as little as may be of solemn and 
awful realities which we cannot put away by shutting 
our eyes against them. In fact, we have grown 
luxurious and self-indulgent : and we do not like that 
which painfully disquiets us, in theology or in any- 
thing else. 

Now, this is not Christianity. We should all, 
perhaps, be pleased and thankful if it were possible 
to blot out of the New Testament certain words ol 
our Saviour, which speak ot everlasting punishment, 
of the outer darkness, of the fire which is never 
quenched, of the rich man in torment : but the words 
stand there. We do not pretend to know exactly 
what the words mean : but it is certain they mean 
something; something very awful; something into 
which human beings may go by rejecting the gospel 
salvation ; something that makes this life, with all its 
commonplace work and care, a time of momentous 
decision for each of us. Now may God, of His great 



22 



The Living Dog 



mercy, lead each of us to decide rightly ! Now may 
the Holy Spirit make each of us feel more deeply 
how bad sin is of which we naturally think so lightly : 
how needful, above all other needs, is salvation from 
sin : and so may He persuade and enable us to 
embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the 
gospel ! Well I know that these words, without His 
grace, will make no more impression upon any heart 
than a word to move a mountain : the most faithful 
preaching of the gospel, apart from the Blessed Spirit, 
may be just as useless, as that which holds back the 
simple tidings of salvation is sure to be. Yet surely 
it may be good for us to commune with our heart, in 
quiet hours alone : and ask, Have we done what these 
words mean? Have we any measure of the better 
life in us : anything that will really bear us up when 
we come to die and can have nothing else ? God be 
thanked if we have. For the feeblest spark of the 
life of grace is worth infinitely more than all other 
possessions. 

A second reason why this is so, is, Because this life 
of grace in us is the great impelling power to all that 
is good : the only such power that can be relied 
upon ; the only thing that will keep us up to duty 
even when it is painful, and when there is nothing to 
be got by it in the way of worldly gain : the only 
thing that will make us strong enough to resist 
whatever temptations may come : the only spring of 
good conduct that will last, and not wear out with 



and the Dead Lion. 



23 



advancing years. You have heard speak of the 
Moral Dynamic : well, here is the Moral Dynamic : 
the source and spring of everything good that man 
can ever do : the central force that shall make the 
whole machinery of our spiritual nature play as it 
ought to play. The man who has in him even a little 
of this life of grace, has in him a gentle, never-ceasing 
energy, tending with the unflagging power of gravita- 
tion, to what is good, true, kind, pure, disinterested, 
self-sacrificing ! The man who lacks the life of grace 
may do almost all he does (to outward appearance) 
almost exactly as the other : but, setting aside mean- 
while the auestion whether there be not something 
amiss about it all, the day will come, at least the day 
may come, that will beat him : the day of sudden 
strong temptation : or he will be broken down by the 
ceaseless gravitation of selfishness, self-seeking, self- 
conceit. Self, in the long run, will have its way, 
wherever the life of grace is lacking. Self will 
be the great moving force, wherever God's grace is 
not so. 

Now let us look at this again. I wish that I could 
say it as clearly as I see it. 

Think : What makes the body move and act ? 
Well, bodily life. I use words in their first inten- 
tions. What makes the soul move and act ? Well, 
the soul's life. But that is not necessarily what we 
mean by moral or spiritual life. There may be in- 
tellectual life without moral or spiritual : there may 



24 



The Living Dog 



be many strong impulses in us to action : there may 
be even some moral discernment of good and evil, 
and tendency to do good rather than evil : but the 
only thing which, in the soul, always tends to what is 
good, and never to anything else, — always tends to 
whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely 
and of good report, — is moral and spiritual life, 
quickened in the soul by the Holy Spirit of God. 
We cannot depend on anything else, if it be tried 
hard enough : we cannot depend on anything else to 
wear, and never wear out. You can never be sure of 
a man, — of what he may yet come to do, — unless you 
are sure of his religious principle. There may be in 
him great amiability and natural morality ; and these 
backed up by the strongest outward restraints from 
his place in life; yet all may break down when 
temptation comes. The spark of God's grace \ the 
better life of the Spirit in us : is the only thing that 
will make sure of successfully withstanding the hour 
of temptation : the only thing that will make us truly 
reach after a goodness towards which self and self- 
seeking could never lead, — even that thorough good- 
ness, genuine from its first spring onwards, that will 
bear God's eye, and come up to His mark. 

Let me go back on this in just a sentence. Here 
is the soul of any one of us : here is the machinery : 
what is there that shall set it in motion ? Well, there 
are in us various powers, various impulsory springs, 
which, being touched by things without us, will push 



and the Dead Lion. 



25 



us on to conduct. But none of these, nor all of them 
together, can be depended on to push us on always 
to what is right, and pure, and self-denying ; and to 
keep us right to the end in spite of temptation, and 
of our natural selfishness. God's grace in the soul is 
the only impelling power to all good. That is the 
better life in us, always urging on to all good; and 
lasting for ever. Oh how infinite the difference be- 
tween the soul that has this spiritual life in even the 
humblest measure, and the soul that has no such life 
at all ! 

A third reason why this is so, is, Because life, 
however little, may grow so great : whereas what has 
no life can never grow greater than it is. 

Of course, every one knows that when life is once 
started, is once there, it is not a thing to stand still, 
and keep on in the same way : it is a germ to grow. 
There is life in the grain of mustard-seed : and so it 
does not abide as the little grain : Give it a fair 
chance, and it grows into a tree. There is life in the 
acorn, that you can hide in your hand : Give it the 
right conditions, the earth, the air, the rain : and after 
hundreds of years, there is the great oak. There is 
life in the little helpless infant, that cannot speak, or 
walk, or understand anything : But give that little one 
fair play ; and after years, it has grown into bodily, 
intellectual, moral strength and stature : the helpless 
thoughtless infant has turned into the strong, anxious, 
hard-working man. The change is great : in the main 



26 The Living Do? 

it is for the better : yet something, too. is lost ; some- 
thing that was beautiful in its season, something that 
was very dear. We have all, perhaps, sometimes 
wished that things would stand still : that things 
grown out of, would come back : but that can never 
be. But if a thing have no life, there it is : and it 
comes to nothing more. The mountain : the sea : the 
ancient tower : abide the same. They will never sur- 
prise us by developing, of their own nature, into 
something quite different and far greater. There 
they are ; and they remain. But if a thing have life, 
you cannot say what it may come to. 

Now it is so with the life of grace in us : That 
principle, once implanted, will grow. And for this 
reason among others, the man with a very little of 
spiritual life in him is so inexpressibly superior to him 
who wants it ; even if the balance in all other respects 
be in favour of him who wants it. Xo one in this 
world can understand ; eye hath not seen and ear 
hath not heard it; whereto, in a better world, and a 
long eternity, the life of grace may grow. It doth 
not yet appear, either to others or to himself, what 
the regenerated soul may grow to, in goodness, and 
happiness, — even in knowledge and intellectual power. 
And the spiritual life, by the necessity of its nature, 
can develop only from what is good into what is 
better. No change can come here that would be sad 
to look at or think of: Nothing will ever be lost 
which we should have wished to keep. But the kind 



and the Dead Lion, 



27 



heart that was so kind here, will grow always kinder 
in the Golden City : the pure soul always purer : and 
the strong and wise spirit that here often guided and 
sustained, oh how wise and mighty in the strength 
and wisdom of a better world ! The life we know 
here, — all life but the life of God's grace, may develop 
either to good or to evil. The children must grow up : 
but they may turn out well or turn out ill. Day 
by day the heart-broken parent may see traits and 
features of character appearing, concerning which he 
wonders from whence they came : Could that heart- 
lessness and selfishness and depravity indeed have 
been all latent in the little heart when the little face 
smiled from its cradle \ — when the little feet took the 
first steps of all the many that have led so wretchedly 
astray ! But it never can be so with the life of grace : 
There is nothing evil in that to be brought out : weak 
and unworthy as may be the believing heart in which 
God's Spirit implanted it, the spark of spiritual life is 
divine and faultless : and its necessary and irresistible 
growth, when you take it away from the unfriendly 
surroundings that in this world stunt and repress 
it, is only from good and happy to happier and 
better. 

Now here is a great encouragement. Here is a 
very hopeful thought. That once the spark of the 
better life is there, it is not merely unquenchable, but 
by and bye it will grow infinitely brighter. For let it 
be said, with shame and sorrow, it would need. Truly 



28 



The Living Dog 



the life of grace, though it be an immortal germ in 
every heart that has it, often makes but a sorry figure 
here : its vitality is weak and cold ; and its manifesta- 
tions very imperfect. The life of grace, though this 
immortal germ, and sure to vanquish at the last, may 
be, amid the unhallowed impulses of the soul, no more 
than a feeble influence cowed by a turbulent mob of 
stronger influences : The life of grace in the heart 
may be as a handful of good wheat, almost choked 
by the ugly weeds that spring up around it. Less 
figuratively, grace in the heart, the real root of the 
matter in a man, may co-exist with so much remaining 
corruption, so many unamiable features of character, 
so many unworthy littlenesses, so many unmortified 
bad tempers and affections, that it is hard to love the 
unlovely Christian in whom all these abide together. 
But then remember, all these bad things will yet die 
out : the central good thing will alone live and grow. 
Everything else in the soul is doomed, in its time, to 
die : the life of grace will live for ever. It is always 
impressive to point out a survivor : the last to live 
among many. Of course, we can do this only after 
the event : the last survivor of any company of men 
becomes known to us only when all the rest are dead. 
It would be strange, if some one here now could show 
us the person who is to be the last survivor of this 
congregation ; the one here to-day who will be living 
when all the rest are gone. It would not, perhaps, be 
the strongest-looking or the likeliest. So it is, surely, 



and the Dead Lion. 



29 



with the converted soul. Other things in it may 
meanwhile be strong, and masterful. But if the man 
be indeed converted and regenerated, we know which 
of all the powers of his soul will be the last survivor. 
It will be the life of grace ; the impulse to what is 
good and true. TJiat may be weak now ; but it will 
grow mighty. That may seem dying-like now ; but it 
is immortal. Ages hence, in the better country, there 
will not be left in the blessed soul a trace of anything 
that used here to be unworthy and mean and evil : 
That will have vanished utterly. But all the good in 
it, which was here so weak, shall have blossomed into 
full luxuriance; into holiness and happiness that in 
this world were never known ! Often-times here we 
have thought that what lasts longest, is best. Blessed 
be God's name, it is that in us which is best, that lasts 
longest. 

My friends, those of us who have this better life of 
the Holy Spirit, and those who have it not, may now 
seem to be going on side by side, keeping close to- 
gether. But, indeed, it is not so. For they are on 
different tracks; and the tracks are diverging, surely 
if slowly; and they will yet come to be tremendously 
far apart ! Let each just go on in the way before 
him, the converted and the unconverted : and by and 
bye they will be divided by a great gulf; Christ him- 
self said so ! They are sad, indeed, the estrange- 
ments that arise in this world, when the little rift of 



50 The Living Dog 

some petty misapprehension sometimes grows into a 
great separation, never to be got over : but there 
never was division like that between spiritual life and 
spiritual death, with all that must come of it here and 
hereafter ! Sharp little pangs come to you, sometimes, 
when you discern that you and some one very near 
you are in truth not so near: that there are great 
differences going down to the very foundations ; that 
the nearness is on the surface and the distance is 
vital. Now shall we make up our minds that the 
great gulf of this universe shall some day divide our 
families, our households, cur friends, those whom we 
call our fellow-Christians? If that is to be, then all 
this life has been the blankest and most dismal of 
failures. Xor can any feel as though to have secured 
his own salvation were sufficient. Being such as we 
are, we cannot meantime see, how even looking forth 
from the golden barriers of heaven, it should be other- 
wise than with bitter tears and a woeful heart for some 
never to come There. Dear friends, united now by 
many kindly ties, oh let us hold together, here and 
hereafter ! "We cannot, if we have this better life, and 
are going on in this better way, turn into the other : 
but we can cry aloud to all we know, Come over and 
go with us, Come over and gladden us, Come over 
and help us ! For indeed "we are journeying unto 
the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you : 
Come with us. and we will do you good;" and you 
will do us good too. So shall we all be "joined to 



and the Dead Lion. 



3* 



all the living : " so shall " our souls be bound in 
the bundle of life with the Lord our God!" " And 
this is life eternal, that we might know Thee the 
only true God ; and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast 
sent!" 



III. 



THE PLACE OF RITUAL. 

" I have set tny affection to the house of my God." — - 
i Chron. xxix. 3. 

IT is well known to all who are interested in the 
Church of Scotland, that for several years past 
there has existed a strong desire in many of her 
members and ministers, both for more solemn and 
decorous places of worship than have hitherto been 
common in this country, and likewise for greater pro- 
priety and dignity in the forms and arrangements of 
the worship itself. The rude and ugly buildings 
which since the Reformation have generally been 
thought good enough to serve as churches, are being 
slowly superseded by others with some pretensions to 
architectural grace and beauty, though still sadly in- 
ferior to the churches of the Middle Ages. For 
doubtless there even yet, in many cases, rests upon 
Scotch church-architecture the blight which comes 
through the desire to grasp at the greatest possible 
appearance at the smallest possible cost. They did 
not set themselves, the men that built our cathedrals, 



The Place of Ritual. 33 

to the solution of that sorry problem. Yet let us be 

thankful for the improvement we have attained ; and 

take it as the -earnest of still better things. Then, 

besides the change in the outward aspect of many of 

our churches, there are changes for the better in our 

worship. There is a greater reverence in God's house. 

No one but the most ignorant will now enter that 

holy place unless with uncovered head. In many 

churches the congregation, instead of irreverently 

rushing out the instant the Blessing is pronounced, as 

though eager to escape from imprisonment, pauses 

solemnly for a little moment to ask God's grace in 

silent prayer. The like, too, at entering church; and 

I suppose we are all agreed that many earnest though 

short prayers for a blessing upon our worship will not 

go for nothing. In singing God's praises, the natural 

and becoming attitude of standing is supplanting the 

unmeaning and irreverent posture of sitting, which I 

never heard any human being defend, unless by the 

very bad argument that the ugly custom is an old 

one. In prayer, likewise, instead of that protracted 

and wearisome standing, which commonly passes into 

lounging or fidgeting, and which commonly too goes 

with staring about and inattention and indevotion, 

you will find that fittest of all attitudes — the knee 

bowed unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; 

that attitude so expressive of due humility, so easy to 

maintain for any reasonable time, and which makes 

it so natural to withdraw our attention from things 

c 



34 The Place of Ritual. 



around, and to concentrate all our thoughts upon the 
act of prayer. And for those distressing sounds, not 
in any way worthy to be called music, which are a 
grievous hindrance to many who are both cultivated 
and devout, and which excite the ridicule of the young 
and thoughtless, we often find a careful and decorous 
service of song, elevating and heart-warming, simple 
so that it may be joined in by all, keeping melodies 
familiar in Christian worship for hundreds of years ; 
and helped, too, by that grand Instrument of music, 
that seems as though made only for sustaining sacred 
strains, and with which even the most unhappily con- 
stituted minds can have no associations but grave 
ones. Surely all these things, to us poor human 
beings, add dignity and solemnity to God's worship. 
Surely they remove hindrances : perhaps afford helps. 
Surely they come of that earnest desire to offer our 
Saviour of our very best to make His house and His 
service all that man can make them ; which dwelt in 
the heart of the sweet Psalmist of Israel when he 
said, as in the text, "I have set my affection to the 
house of my God." 

But the movement towards greater decorum in our 
public worship would have been unlike all other 
reformations if it had not met with opposition of vari- 
ous kinds. The feeling which prompted some part 
of that opposition was a feeling worthy of all respect. 
There were, and there still are, many good Christian 
people who were impatient of any change from the 



The Place of Ritual. 55 

dear old ways ; who had grown so warmly attached to 
the simple forms to which they had been accustomed 
from childhood, that they could not think any change 
from these a change for the better. All due honour 
to the feeling; it is a sacred one, and never to be 
disregarded ; but yet we learn, in the process of our 
lives, that we shall be obliged to make up our minds 
to many changes which we do not like at all, if the 
common sense of the majority decide that they are 
improvements. And it is perfectly vain to think to 
keep the worship of our Church standing stock-still 
at a point to which ceaseless change has brought it. 
Besides this respectable sentiment, leaning against all 
innovation, which in other days leant against steam- 
ships and railways, against the abolition of slavery, 
against every political improvement that ever has been 
attained, various arguments of more or less force have 
been adduced in the same direction. It has been 
objected to kneeling at prayer and standing at praise, 
that many millions of our fellow- Christians do so : as 
if that were a reason why we should not. The time 
has been in Scotland when a determination to do 
just the opposite of what the vast majority of our 
fellow- Christians do, was a leading motive that had 
much to say in the settlement of forms of worship as 
of other ecclesiastical arrangements ; but that time is 
happily past ; and it is hard to think of anything less 
worthy of respect than the mere spirit of contrariety, 
that resolves to have something quite different from 



36 The Place of Ritual. 



what has been approved by most Christians at most 
times. Then there is what may be called the argu- 
ment of the thin end of the wedge. The people who 
use this argument say that they can see no harm in 
organs, or in kneeling at prayer and standing at 
praise; but then these things, though themselves 
right, may perhaps lead to what is wrong. So while 
you fancy you are merely making your worship a little 
more decorous, you are in fact starting off in the 
direction of Popery, or perhaps of Rationalism and 
ultimate Infidelity. The plain answer to all this is, 
Whenever you are asked to make any change which 
is wrong, stop there. But you will never, in fact, deter 
any but very weak persons from doing what they think 
desirable and you admit to be right, by holding up 
the bugbear that in some way, which nobody can see, 
evil will come of it. I do not believe that what is, 
as before God, right, can ever be a step to what is 
wrong. And that old suggestion of the wedge has 
been so often proved an imposture, that with reason- 
able folk it has quite lost its power. 

I have remarked of late that some who dislike and 
distrust these improvements in worship have adopted 
the fashion of calling such as adopt or approve them 
by the depreciatory name of Ritualists. I do not 
believe that any of the ministers or members of the 
Church who have been so described care in the least 
degree for the word ; or mind at all what the persons 



The Place of Ritual. 3 7 



who use it think of them. But as it is conceivable 
that the movement may suffer in the estimation of 
fair and candid men through being (so to speak) 
ticketed with a suspected name, I should wish, in the 
interest of truth, to look for a little into this matter. 
Now, what is Ritualism ? 

Ritualism, in the bad sense, cannot mean merely 
the maintaining and approving of certain rites, or 
appointed forms of worship. It is quite plain that 
no public worship could go on without some of these. 
It would never do that the congregation should 
assemble, and no one know what was to be done 
next. The very barest and simplest worship in which 
a congregation is to join must have its appointed 
forms of service for common Sundays and Com- 
munion Sundays. In short, wherever you have com- 
mon or united w T orship, you must have a Ritual. 

But Ritualism, used in a bad sense, is probably 
intended by the people who use the word to convey 
the idea of so overlaying God's worship with forms, 
with minute details, with ceremonial observances, 
that devotion exhales, and is lost in these. The idea 
is likewise suggested of a disposition to regard these 
lesser matters as of vital importance, or at least to 
make much of them. And Ritualism, thus under- 
stood, in its worst development comes to this : that 
people fancy that diligent attention to these things is 
the true worship of God. And no doubt it is pos- 
sible for human beings, even in this age of gospel 



38 The Place of Ritual. 



light, to come to fancy that genuflections and prostra- 
tions, frequent repetitions of certain prescribed prayers, 
bodily presence in church while certain ceremonies 
and solemnities are being carried out, is the worship 
of God. To sum up : Excessive attention to the 
details of worship; undue elaboration of these; making 
too much of them ; attaching too much importance to 
them, and resting too much in them; is Ritualism. 
And no one of even the most moderate acquaintance 
with the facts can deny that, in spite of the strong 
way in which Christianity sets its face against such 
things, what may justly be called Ritualism does exist 
in the Christian Church ; and that in forms often very 
foolish and irritating, sometimes very delusive and 
mischievous. 

But, in this evil sense of the word, there is in the 
National Church of this country no Ritualism at all. 
With our worship as it is, no Ritualism is possible 
with us. For, first, no one can say that our worship, 
even where most carefully studied, is overlaid with 
forms. Our forms are very few, and very simple. We 
have really as little of form as is compatible with our 
having any recognised order of worship at all. And 
next, no one among us imagines for a moment that 
the few little improvements aimed at, — the kneeling at 
prayer, standing at praise, the organ, the decorous 
church with its stained glass and its high-pitched 
gables, — can in themselves please God or profit the 
worshipper, apart from the true spiritual worship ; that 



The Place of Ritual. 



39 



devotion of the heart, in spirit and in truth, which 
our Father seeks in such as worship Him. No one 
fancies that if he offers prayer heartlessly, kneeling, it 
will do him more good than if he offers prayer heart- 
lessly, standing. Neither does any sane person dream 
that if he prays to God with all his heart, the favour 
with w T hich God will hear his prayer depends in the 
very smallest degree upon the bodily attitude in which 
his prayer is offered. Sitting, like King David • stand- 
ing, like the poor publican ; kneeling, with St Paul ; 
or prostrate on the earth, like Elijah ; it matters not a 
pin's weight which, so only the prayer go up through 
Christ, and be sincere. 

It is, therefore, utterly unjust to try to excite pre- 
judice against the improvement of our worship by 
raising the cry of Ritualism. The name is quite in- 
applicable. The use of it in this matter is simply a 
case of what is vulgarly termed calling names. It is 
intended to awake prejudice ; or, at the best, meant 
to express a dislike for which there is no sound reason 
to be given. And it is to be remembered that the 
very essence of the extremest Ritualism exists in that 
man who makes a vital thing of the bareness and 
baldness of his worship ; and who cleaves to that, as 
though there could be no hearty devotion without it. 
Here you have the ritualist again ; probably with 
much sourness, narrowness, and ignorant self-suffi- 
ciency added. 

I remember, and never forget, that the grand sub- 



40 The Place of Ritual. 

ject of every faithful minister's preaching is the blessed 
gospel of Christ's atoning sacrifice and the Holy 
Spirit's work upon the heart I am not at all afraid 
that any one who hears me regularly will misjudge 
me as to this. But I hold it very fit that on special 
occasions such as the present, this question of Ritual, 
of so much interest to many in these days, be fairly 
looked at. And I take this opportunity to shortly 
set forth the view r s on it which I know to be held by 
many of our most diligent and enlightened clergy. 
Nor will it do to say the question is one of very little 
consequence. Everything that concerns God's wor- 
ship and our duty to Him is of great consequence. 
All we render to Him ought to be our Best. Now, of 
course, our heart is our best ; nothing is of any worth 
without that. But there are things that go with it ; 
and signify it ; and help the giving of it. And it is 
childish to say that because we attend to the lesser 
matters we must be neglecting the greater. Just the 
contrary is the fact. You remember w T ise words of 
our Saviour • words abundantly confirmed by experi- 
ence : " He that is faithful in that which is least, is 
faithful also in much." The minister who tries his 
best to have a decorous and solemn worship in his 
church, is just the man who will be most diligent in 
all his duty. The minister who is content with an 
ugly church and a careless service, is the man who is 
likely to be slovenly and careless in everything he is 
called to do 



The Place of Ritual. 41 



You will find it readily conceded by most intelli- 
gent members of the Scotch Church, that her worship 
is one which, unless where performed by a minister of 
rare gifts both of head and heart, or where the wor- 
shippers are of far more than average spirituality and 
devotion of soul, is somewhat bare and unattractive. 
I have many opportunities of remarking how it strikes 
a cultivated stranger. The pre-Reformation Church 
in this country was so thoroughly corrupt, so bitterly 
bad, that our reformers thought they could not get 
too far away from it; and Presbytery, both in govern 
ment and worship, was a vehement reaction again s 1 
Popery. It may be said, without presumption, that 
under the circumstances then existing it was hardly 
possible that the Reformation should not be pushed 
to an extreme. That it was so, is a patent fact. 
Never was there worship, never government, more 
thoroughly different from those of the mediaeval Church 
than we have in Scotland. And with very much 
that was cumbrous and bad, doubtless some things 
went whose absence is a loss. The magnificent 
cathedral of this city was one of these. Surely 
Romish error might have been got rid of, yet that 
grand church spared. The thing can be done. It 
was done in England; nearer home, it was done in 
Glasgow. Now, you and I, trained to disbelieve the 
infallibility of the ancient Church, are not likely to 
believe the infallibility of the first reformers, even in 
matters aesthetic They were zealous, good, and„ 



42 



The Place of Ritual. 



brave men : how brave, we can now hardly realise. 
We owe them an inexpressible debt of gratitude, for 
truth and liberty ; we believe that in vital matters 
their doctrine was the mind of God's Spirit ; but we 
utterly refuse to be bound by all their lesser opinions, 
prejudices, and crotchets, for evermore. It was a 
crotchet, if there ever was such a thing (and if the 
story be true at all), that the greatest of them ex- 
pressed when he spoke of the organ in contemptuous 
terms that have grown proverbial ; but I do not 
believe that the people of the many congregations 
among us whose worship is helped by that sacred 
instrument feel their enjoyment of the privilege one 
whit abated, merely because one great and good man 
had an unreasonable dislike to it. In excited times, 
in very special circumstances, sometimes under in- 
fluences by no means healthily Scotch, our public 
worship was gradually formed. And it is quite certain 
that the best and greatest among the founders of our 
Church never designed the worship which was char- 
acteristic of our Church for many years. A service 
such as I can remember as a boy, from which the 
reading of God's Word was excluded from year's end 
to year's end ; in which the singing of God's praise 
was reduced to the least thing possible; in which 
that prayer was never heard which Christ taught and 
commanded ; in which the sermon was the outstand- 
ing and important thing, and in which the prayers 
were often merely sermons in disguise : was far, far 



The Place of Ritual. 43 



away from the brave and honest heart of Knox. But 
if it were otherwise, I should not care. No laws, or 
arrangements, can bind posterity. Posterity will think 
for itself. And this present generation, in the exer- 
cise of its undoubted right, is deciding in favour of 
churches liker the house of God than we have been 
used to, and of a service more worthy. We do not 
propose to degrade the sermon from its due place, 
but to lift up to their due eminence the places of 
prayer and praise. We will never forget that the only 
acceptable worship is that which is offered in spirit 
and in truth ; but we remember, too, that outward 
circumstances will always act powerfully on the wor- 
shipper's mind, either as helps or as hindrances. 

It is in itself a fit thing that God's worship should 
be surrounded by such external circumstances of 
dignity and solemnity as those to which I have several 
times referred. There is an essential propriety in the 
case. While human nature remains such as it is, 
accessories will be important, and will be felt as such. 
There are exceptional persons who have no feeling at 
all as to forms in the service of God ; not at all of 
necessity through superior spirituality, but simply 
because through their make and nature they do not 
care for these things. Then, on the other hand, there 
are those who are peculiarly interested and impressed 
by outward proprieties and solemnities ; not by any 
means through lack of spirituality, still less through 
lack of devotion, but just because such are their 



44 



The Place of Ritual. 



nature and training. And nature has more to do 
with the matter than training. I have never known a 
deeper longing after such stately and ornate worship 
as the choral service of the Anglican Church, than 
among those reared and educated under the straitest 
severities of Presbytery. But, setting apart excep- 
tional persons, the average Christian feels the fitness 
of which I speak. When the Parliament of the nation 
is opened and closed, it is with all due ceremony. 
The proceedings of our higher courts of justice are 
conducted with all decorous state : and every one 
knows that where this has been neglected, a grievous 
loss is soon felt. So should it be with what is, in 
itself, the most solemn of all occupations, the public 
worship of Almighty God. Worship through the 
great Mediator : worship by the blessed Spirit : and 
the solemnity of soul and mind will inevitably mani- 
fest itself in a corresponding solemnity of outward 
demeanour. On that memorable day which gave the 
human race its right Universal Prayer, the external 
deportment of the poor publican, — the downcast eyes, 
the smiting on the breast, the modest position " afar 
off/ 5 — surely all these things harmonised with that 
frame of spirit which breathes yet through the " God 
be merciful to me a sinner \ n But, indeed, I would 
not argue with any one who denied that outward seem* 
liness is fitting in the public worship of the Church. 
The thing is too plain. And it is curious to remark 
how even those who strip their worship barest of all 



The Place of RittcaL 



45 



ritual, have yet some little thing they stop at and 
stand up for. That petty sectarian flock which, with- 
out at all deserving it, was ministered to by John 
Foster, though bitterly opposed to all decent wearing 
of robes by officiating ministers, was yet infinitely 
scandalised when the preacher faithfully carried out 
their principle by appearing in his pulpit in a blue 
coat and a red waistcoat. A gown or a surplice they 
could not bear; but still they insisted that their 
minister must be dressed in black. It was nature 
asserting herself even where stupid bigotry had done 
its utmost to expel her. 

I go on to say, that surely it is right to do all w r e 
can, within legitimate limits, to make God's house 
and worship attractive. No doubt, if all professing 
Christians were all they ought to be, the bare fact of 
spiritual communion with God through Christ, in that 
united prayer which is promised a special answer, 
would be enough ; nothing more would be needed to 
draw us, with cords of love, to the house of prayer. 
My friends, it is lamentably true that that is not 
enough. Further attraction is needful, appealing to 
lower elements in our nature. A popular preacher ; 
grand music ; a magnificent church ; do, as a matter 
of fact, bring out very many who would not be drawn 
by the mere spiritual worship of God. Would God it 
were otherwise ! But fact is fact ; and you may be 
thankful if you can lead human beings to do what in 
itself is right, by the use of even somewhat inferior 



4.6 The Place of Ritual. 



means. Then we must all confess, not without a 
certain humiliation, that our spiritual moods are sadly 
affected by little outward circumstances. A very 
rainy Communion Sunday, when communicants arrive 
at church in a condition of great physical discomfort ; 
how such a day will affect the pleasure and profit of 
Communion ! A little bodily pain while in church at 
an ordinary service ; an unhealthily heated atmos- 
phere in the church ; how these things distract atten- 
tion and abate enjoyment! All that is humbling; 
but it is true. And to very many worshippers there 
is no bodily pain, no physical discomfort, which so 
painfully jars on devout feeling and distracts solemn 
thought, as such graceless irreverence as I have often 
seen in country churches ; the barn-like building, the 
horrible singing, the general rudeness and squalor 
that characterise the entire service. You may be 
angry with yourself that you are so hindered and 
clogged by these miserable externalities : you may 
confess it in your evening prayer as a sin, and pain- 
fully feel as though it were mainly your own fault : 
but unless you could get another nervous system you 
never will wholly rise above these influences while 
your soul dwells in the flesh. The most devout, if 
they have a sensitive organisation, will feel these 
things ; far more the average worshipper. Now, 
brethren, I say it is a bound en duty to make God's 
worship such, that there shall be nothing about it to 
jar on the right mood of mind and heart with which 



The Place of Ritual. 



47 



we should pray to wait upon it. I would not have it 
in the power of even the most regardless to plead as 
an excuse for absence from church, that really the 
whole service when he last was there was so rude, so 
uninteresting, that there was no inducement to go 
back again. And utterly disbelieving (as I utterly 
disbelieve) the power of scolding to dragoon people 
to God's house ; firmly believing that people must be 
drawn to God's house and not driven ; I strongly hold 
that it is right, that it is a Christian duty, to make the 
church, and everything about it, such, that all kinds 
of people may be attracted to it with somewhat of the 
Psalmist's feeling in their heart — " How amiable are 
Thy tabernacles, Lord of Hosts ! " And if they 
come, drawn by mixed motives somewhat short of the 
highest and best of all, still they may be lifted up by 
praise; and led into hearty joining in prayer that in- 
terprets their deepest wants and wishes, and expresses 
them : and the preacher has them within hearing of 
his voice ; it will be his own fault if he do not con- 
strain them to attend to it ; and he may hope, by 
God's grace, to impress and profit, to startle and con- 
vert, to edify and comfort. Wherefore we say, by all 
fair means attract human beings to God's house, and 
interest them while there. We repudiate, indeed, 
with the keenest of repudiation, the vulgar arts of the 
pulpit quack, the most hateful of all quackery. But 
we say, let the church be the most beautiful place the 
poor man ever sees. Let it abide in his remembrance 



43 



The Place of Ritual. 



through the week, the house like which there is none 
other; with its solemn light, its saintly majesty, its 
holy calm. Let the praises be the best and sweetest, 
the result of pious skill and reverent care. Let the 
prayers be diligently gathered from the Universal 
Church's rich stores of devout thought and expres- 
sion, coming of abundant study, and themselves the 
outcome of many earnest prayers. And let the out- 
ward reverence of all the worshippers testify to the 
profound inward sense in Whose house they are met, 
and in Whose presence : that all things may speak of 
"worshipping the Lord in the beauty of holiness," 
" worshipping in spirit and in truth." 

Dear friends, if all that be as yet, in many places, 
no better than a pleasant vision, it is surely one worth 
pains, and prayer, and patient endurance, to bring 
forth to a glorious reality. There are prejudices to 
be overcome ; many difficulties in the way. But we 
must work, and wait. And if the work be God's 
work, God will bring it in His good time ! 



IV. 



REST. 



" This is not your rest."— Micah ii. to. 
E are going on. my friends : years are passing 



occasions, like the fall of the leaf, like the returning 
communion season with its crowd of warm and solemn 
remembrances; that bring this home to us. And as 
the years pass on. we lose in some ways. But there 
is one great gain that comes to us, if we take it 
rightly : we know what to expect of this life. We 
know the best we shall get. There may be things 
coming to us. beyond our experience hitherto : awful 
bodily pain, sudden bereavement, long and wearing 
anxiety. These things have come to others \ they 
may be coming to us. But if we do not know the 
worst of this life, we know the best of it. There is 
no need to unduly cry it down : it is not the best ci 
men who have spoken the worst of this world. Yet, 
without that, we may say that a life, whose whole 
interest is on this side of time, comes to be a weary 
round, and unsatisfying. You cannot expect the 




away. There are anniversaries in our lives : 



5o 



Rest. 



elate step, nor the very light heart, commonly. You 
can get on; and be thankful ; and wish all others were 
as well as yourselves. But, as time advances, this 
life tends, with most, to be made up of hard and con- 
stant work ; of anxiety, as to your means, as to your 
children ; of little vexations and cross-incidents arising 
from unexpected quarters ; of troubles that come of 
not beting on your guard, not being suspicious enough, 
being too outspoken, and the like. Life is a disap- 
pointment, even to the most successful ; in the sense 
that it does not come up to early youthful hopes. It 
would not do that all this should go on for ever. 
Now, we want what will. 

It is in this experience that we get good, as w r e go 
on through successive years : that is, if we take the 
discipline as we ought. " This is not our rest : " and 
in all these ways God is telling us so. And being so 
assured, more and more, the more we ought to feel 
that we must try in another direction. It is right, 
most right, that we should all wish to be happy : 
now, this world will not do. The pleasures and 
profits of this world, God has said determinately, 
will not do. They cannot content these souls that 
are within us : only Christ can do that ! There are 
two things certain about our being here, so long as 
we try to find our soul's portion in the things of sense 
and time. One is, that if you desire a thing very 
much, and think how greatly you would enjoy it, and 
toil ever so hard for it, yet it may please God to say, 



Rest 



5i 



No, not that : you shall not have that : you must 
resign your mind to do without it. The other is, that 
if you get the thing, all you had wished, it will not be 
what you had thought The charm will be gone from 
it. That is the fashion and way of this world. This 
life, and all the interests of this life, are marked with 
unsatisfactoriness. It is the glory of our immortal 
nature that nothing can perfectly or long satisfy it 
except God himself. The poor inferior animals, our 
humble fellow-creatures, are content when they Jiave 
what this life can yield them : they have no further- 
reaching want than the supply of bodily comfort. 
But nothing whatsoever, that begins and ends on this 
present state of being, can quench the soul's thirst 
We want something else ; something more. You 
may not know it ; you may never have thought of it : 
but your " souls thirst for God, for the living God ! " 
You may fancy that this or that worldly blessing 
would set you right : it would not ! And besides, 
think of the awful uncertainty of all we care for here. 
It is a question of Time with all. A few days may, a 
few years must, part us. The pleasant home; books; 
friends ; children : how slight our hold on them ; how 
easily and swiftly broken! And more: all these 
things are changing ; are leaving us ; are losing 
(some of them) their interest and savour; as we feel 
a lessening relish for all in this life. What can we 
do, in the thought of all this, and of innumerable 
vivid glimpses have each had into the unsatis- 



Rest. 



factoriness and uncertainty of all things here; but 
look up to our merciful Saviour, and say well-re- 
membered words said a hundred times before, but 
whose meaning we can understand now infinitely 
better than when we said them or saw them first : 
"Thou hast made us for Thyself; and our heart is 
restless till it resteth in Thee ! " 

My friends, it is a wonderful thing, an inexpressibly 
precious thing, for creatures like us, to find out some- 
thing which will not lose its interest as we grow old : 
which we shall always like better, and find a greater 
charm in : which we are perfectly sure to get, if we 
honestly try ; and which we can keep always. Now 
there is such a thing ; and only one such. It was no 
wonder that our Blessed Redeemer Himself called it 
the One Thing Needful : and it is, shortly, to find, 
and know, and believe in Him. To take the great 
step, of casting off from ourselves the care of our- 
selves ; rolling all upon Him ; looking to Him, alone, 
altogether, for pardon, peace, holiness, comfort, guid- 
ance, — in brief, for everything we need, or ever can 
need, here, or wherever we can ever go. Now, this 
is the only thing that can satisfy : satisfy in so far 
here, because here the imperfection of grace in us, 
the presence of sin in us, and never-ceasing troubles 
around us, must always hinder our being here all we 
would be : but satisfy fully hereafter, where all that 
can defile, mislead, or vex, shall be excluded finally. 
Now, it is a discouraging thing to an earnest, 



Rest. 



53 



honest spirit, when great religious lessons and truths 
are set out in a vague, misty way : oh give us truth 
and reality when it comes to the question of the only 
thing that can hold us up in the awful hour we die : 
and I desire, by God's grace, at this time, that we all 
may be helped very clearly and plainly to recall, and 
understand, what it exactly is to go to Christ; and 
how exactly it is that it comes of that to have an 
unfailing spring of satisfaction, and peace, and rest, 
and consolation. Now may God's Holy Spirit be 
very specially present with each of us, speaking and 
hearing of these serious things. 

Well, when we speak of turning from the unsatis- 
fying things of time and sense to the enduring 
realities of eternity, what is the precise thing that is 
meant ? Plainly, it is the same thing which is some- 
times spoken of as " looking not to the things which 
are seen but to those which are unseen," — or as 
" setting the affection on things above, not on things 
on the earth/' — or as " seeking first the kingdom of 
God and His righteousness." But we must have a 
real explanation of all this. These have grown very 
much to be conventional phrases, failing to convey 
any distinct sense to many people. 

But they mean, that we think to ourselves, Here 
we are, tied to a never-ending life : bound to go on 
in conscious existence for ever and ever. Then we 
know, that, passing into the world which is beyond 
the grave, there are just two states; holiness and 



54 



Rest. 



happiness, sin and loss and woe. And, God be 
thanked, He has, in the mission and death of His 
Son our Saviour, provided for our being eternally holy 
and happy. Thinking of these things; praying to 
understand and feel them ; the Holy Spirit comes ; 
works on our souls when we fancy we are judging and 
resolving for ourselves ; inclines us, constrains us, to 
make choice of Christ and believe on Him. This He 
does in various ways, in the case of different people. 
Sometimes the soul is overwhelmed by an awful sense 
of guilt and danger : and we run to Christ in utter 
fear. Sometimes there is nothing more urgent than a 
deep sense that all else is passing, hollow, unsatisfy- 
ing : and we go to Christ in Whom all fulness dwells, 
that the hungry and thirsty soul may be content. 
Sometimes there is an inexpressible weariness : we 
have tried everywhere for truth, for good, and have 
only grown wearier : and then a kind Voice suits 
itself to the exigency, and says "Come unto Me, and 
I will give you rest." Various are the experiences 
that lead poor creatures like us to the Blessed Re- 
deemer : but we may generalise so far as to say that 
in every case we feel our need of Him, and go to 
Him, and believe on Him. 

Feeling our need of Him is simply said : it means 
that we know something is wrong about us, all wrong: 
we are so miserable, so sinful, so unable to make 
ourselves any wiser or better, so foolish and evil and 
unhappy in our heart, — that we are sure a kind God 



Rest. 



55 



never meant us to be this way : and something has 
said to us, some voice within or without, that Jesus 
Christ the Saviour can mend all that, and set that 
right which is wrong. And as for going to Him, 
rinding Him, believing on Him, would that this could 
be made as plain to all ! Well, for one thing, it is 
the taking of a decisive step. I venture not to say, 
but that sometimes it may not be so. Doubtless 
there are those in Heaven, and those in the Church 
on earth, who never were converted : who needed no 
conversion : who were regenerated in baptism, as we 
pray all Christian children may be ; or with whom 
the better birth and the earthly were as one : whose 
faith in Christ grew with the development of their 
natural faculties, and had as little of conscious begin- 
ning as these : and with such happy ones, blest above 
the race, there was no such time of decision, no such 
decided step, as we thought of. But, with ordinary 
believing people, there was a time, there were many 
times, when, deeply convinced that nothing else would 
avail, that there was salvation in no other, they went 
with all their souls' sins and wants, and cast them- 
selves at the feet of the great Redeemer. Dear 
friends, ask the Holy Spirit to explain that, and make 
you do it : and then you will know what it means. 
We can set it out in words to a certain degree : saying 
that in believing on Christ we trust our souls to Him 
to purify and save : we renounce all self-dependence, 
give up every earthly stay, and fly to Him as our only 



Rest 



hope : placing our entire reliance on His atoning 
blood and His spotless righteousness : looking to 
Him alone for help and patience here, for rest and 
joy above. Now, with most, there are times of 
decision, when all that is done : done more or less 
heartily, more or less joyfully, with more or less sense 
that it is done effectually. But it is not done just 
for once. We must do it anew every day. Every 
day anew, li Nothing in my hand I bring; simply to 
Thy cross I cling. n In every prayer, we do that 
anew. "Whenever we are in doubt whether we have 
done it really, let us go and do it again : let us turn 
to Him anew. A moment of time is enough : a silent 
lifting up of the heart to the Saviour, always ready to 
welcome : that is believing on Christ and being saved. 
At this moment, if any professing Christian here present 
be in doubt whether up to this time he have really 
and fully believed, look up to Christ, He is within 
hearing, and say " Lord, I believe ; help Thou mine 
unbelief." All this is a thing to be spiritually dis- 
cerned : but it is not unintelligible, not even mystical. 
The case is this : Do you feel you cannot save your- 
self? Are you content that Christ should save you ? 
Do you consent to this ? 

And there need be no excitement about this : there 
is nothing feverish in an act of faith. Do not fancy 
that it is not rightly cone, unless you can force your- 
self up to strong emotion. A thing may be very deep, 
though it be quiet. Here is a calm choice, to be 



Rest. 



57 



calmly made : a calm deed, to be calmly done. And 
when you have believed on Christ, you have done a 
thing which may be put, and stated, in various ways. 
But one thing, assuredly, you have done, when you 
have believed on Christ : You have turned, for your 
soul's true lot and portion, from the seen to the 
unseen. 

And now there is more, far more, to be done, which 
amounts to that too. "When you have believed on 
Christ, you cannot just turn back to worldly things 
and interests, and go on with them just as before. 
You will find, you ought to find, that a change has 
passed upon them all. Everybody has found this 
out, who has gone through this decisive time. One 
who went through it, long ago, has described it better 
than any one else ever did. He has described it in 
words you have heard before. " If any man be in 
Christ, he is a new creature : Old things are passed 
away : behold, all things are become new." And the 
main cause of this great change is this : That whereas 
naturally we think that the things of this world would 
satisfy us and make us happy if we could only get all 
we want, now we see that it is not so : and though 
living still among things seen and temporal, and 
sometimes forced to be careful and troubled about 
these, yet we cleave to that which is unseen and 
spiritual and eternal, and work mainly for ends not 
discernible by sense. Now, what is meant when we 



53 



Rest. 



speak of working towards unseen ends? What ex- 
actly have we got to do every day, when once we 
have set ourselves to working in that way ? Well, it 
means this : that now the thing we most wish and 
work for, has ceased to be outside success and pro- 
gress, getting little distinctions and honours, getting 
on a little, growing better off. That is all well 
enough, but it is not the first thing : we know of 
something better: something which, will make us 
happier than that ; and which will bring us the 
cheering sense of God's approval in doing it, as 
other things never can. And this is, that we try to 
grow holier and better : That we cultivate our heart, 
and keep it : That we set ourselves to put down bad 
tendencies within us, and perverse affections. There 
comes, under some juncture of outward circumstances, 
an impulse to feel unkindly, enviously, discontentedly: 
and then to act accordingly. Now, here is something 
to do. You know in yourself that this impulse, how- 
ever natural it be, however urgent that you yield to 
it, is wrong : Christ could never approve your speak- 
ing or acting as it would make you speak or act : 
Well, set yourself to put that down ! You have 
received great provocation : you have great reason 
to be angry : By God's grace you will not : Up, and 
fight against the temptation. It will cost you time : 
it will cost you trouble : you will not do it by one 
single effort or prayer : it will take many prayers and 
efforts, often coming from a sore and sorrowful heart ; 



Rest. 



59 



but you are perfectly sure, if you really mean it, to 
succeed in the end. And when you have succeeded, 
you will feel very happy : very thankful : humbled 
indeed, and well assured that you never did that or 
any good thing in any strength of your own; but 
more substantially happy at heart than if you had hit 
an enemy ever so hard, or ever so cleverly tripped up 
a rival ; — aye, or ever so honestly and fairly won some 
worldly gain or honour. And you will never get tired 
of this ; never while you live. Fighting with tempta- 
tion ; with evil in yourself; you will find in this a 
never-failing interest, and one of the most varied 
kind. While worldly aims and ends lose their interest 
as years pass on, this never will. Though reverses 
and failures come in your outward lot, here there may 
be unbroken success, growth, and prosperity : You 
will always, to the end, be growing a richer and 
happier man ; — gaining possessions which cannot be 
seen indeed, but which are the most substantial of all. 
Yes, you have learned now to look, not to the things 
which are seen but to the things which are not seen : 
and then "the things which are seen are temporal, 
but the things which are not seen are eternal." A 
holy heart, resigned to God's will, renewed and 
sanctified, delivered from the dominion of evil, reach- 
ing always after more grace, is one of the things which 
are eternal. And being so, it is a thing you can never 
get tired of. It is not a thing that comes to its bloom 
and perfection, and then fades and goes. It is a 



6o 



Rest. 



visitor from that enduring world which is our rest 
It is Christ in yon, divine and immortal ! 

Here, then, is some portion, some anticipation, 
of the true satisfying rest of a better world. It 
is holiness of heart, it is likeness to Christ, it is a 
sanctifying soul. Here is a possession which you 
are sure to get if you honestly strive and earnestly 
pray for it : Here is a possession whose charm will not 
vanish when it is won : Here is a possession which 
will satisfy; and whose interest will always be fresh 
when other interests fade with your fading self. And 
there is no mystery as to the way in which every 
humble human being is to set about the gaining of 
it. Look into your heart : you will easily see some- 
thing amiss : Set yourself, praying for God's help, to 
mend it. This is your work: and, strange to say, 
herein is your rest : Thus doing, you are seeking and 
finding the " continuing city." It will draw you very- 
near your Saviour, if every day, every morning, you 
think, Now, here is something to set right by the help 
of the Holy Spirit : I am turning cold-hearted and 
indevout ; I am growing worldly again, and self- 
seeking : I am growing envious, suspicious, harsh of 
temper, hasty of speech : I am growing care-worn, 
depressed, unthankful : All that must be changed : O 
Blessed Saviour, give Thy Spirit to change it ! And 
then the solid comfort of feeling, if we could but 
really feel, that all the worries, all the petty sordid 
vexations which come of dealings with impracticable, 



Rest. 



61 



wrong-headed, stupid, dishonest people, all the grow- 
ing weariness, and the blank dissatisfaction, and the 
gleam gone from this world, are God's discipline to 
work the higher inner health and life and prosperity. 
Even in seasons of despondency, deep almost as 
Elijah's, what a true help, just to cling to this one 
thing, and hold it tight in the darkness, that God has 
sent this : This is what I need : Let Kis Blessed 
Spirit make it do what He intended. Dear friends, 
if in any good measure we succeed in attaining this, 
then, in so doing, we have transferred our true in- 
terest and our soul's portion from this outer worldly 
scene, with its innumerable accidents and mischances, 
never to be quite guarded against, and from whose 
reach not even God's own people (though loved of 
Him) are free ; to that serener inner region where 
there are no mischances ; where it may be all 
prosperity, all growth, all increase of grace, and 
perseverance therein to the end. We have got away 
from the strifes and storms of time, into the calm of 
eternity : we have turned from the seen to the unseen : 
we have set our true life where it is no longer at the 
mercy of a thousand outward contingencies, but where 
it is "hid with Christ in God." 

And all this is done, in sober truth, when we turn 
our main thought from the outward cares and inci- 
dents of our life, to the character which is growing 
up in us under these. It is not the scaffolding any 
more that we chiefly mind, but the building which is 



62 



Rest 



gradually rising up within it. It does not matter so 
much now, whether in this world we are to get all we 
used to wish, in the respect of worldly wealth and 
standing and success : if only, by God's kind grace, 
all things are made to work together to make us 
holier, kinder, more humble, more patient, more 
sympathetic, more like what Christ was. It does 
not matter so much now, whether our children and all 
we care for are to reach the worldly place which we 
may yet confess we should desire for them, — making 
far better of this life than we have ever done, — if 
God would but nil their hearts with His Holy Spirit, 
and make them so take all that comes to them, as 
that all may go to make them more like Christ. For 
then it will indeed be well with us ; well with our 
children ; well with all : well here, well hereafter. 
The thing is sure : nothing can be more sure. We 
can go no farther in the explanation of it, than to say 
that God has so made us, that if we try faithfully to 
live a life in Christ, to battle with evil in our hearts, 
to seek after holiness, we shall feel in ourselves a solid 
peace and content and happiness in no other way to 
be found in this world ; which is in truth an anticipa- 
tion and foretaste of heaven. This is to lay hold on 
eternal life : This is to drink some share at least of 
that living water, of which whoso drinks need thirst 
no more. This is what is meant when we speak of 
our souls, made for God, and restless (hopelessly 
restless) elsewhere, resting in Him ! Oh may that 



Rest, 



63 



peace of God, which passeth all understanding, fill 
our hearts and minds ! 

You see, then, you who are often weary, often dis- 
appointed, never fully satisfied, where to go for rest, 
for prosperity, for content full and large. No doubt, 
the imperfection and sinfulness of our nature will make 
all these things imperfect in this life. But this is the 
way to go. This way lies that Rest, which this world 
is not for us, and can never be. In Christ is rest : 
let us go to Him anew to-day. You have been stirred 
up, only by way of remembrance, to go to Him ; and 
reminded what afterwards it becomes us to do. By 
God's grace we shall do it all : by God's grace. And 
never was there a time in this world's history, in which 
poor weary creatures needed all this more. Old 
beliefs are assailed : old likings are held cheap : old 
and dear prepossessions and (if you will) prejudices 
are rudely swept away. It cannot be other than a 
troubled world to thinking people now. Not any 
more in our time can there be, in religion, in state 
or in church, the even quietness for which many 
would be thankful. And there are other changes 
too. The seasons, indeed, come and go as hereto- 
fore : the leaves grow green and grow yellow : the 
days lengthen and draw in as they used : but this 
world is not the same. The Communion season 
comes round as of old ; and there is the same Saviour 
to remember; but we know in ourselves that there is 
a great change. And, doubtless, we shall change still 



6 4 



Rest 



more. The dearest things to each of us are going 
away from being what they used to be. Your chil- 
dren will not always be the merry little children : nor 
can you have them all under your roof as it once was. 
More and more, trouble hems us in : and we need a 
portion and a stay elsewhere. Blessed be God's 
Name, we know Where. This is not our rest : but 
our rest is not only beyond the grave. It is here : 
here in Christ; if we will go to Him truly, and seek 
His Spirit constantly, and live by never-ceasing 
prayer. Then we, and all we love, shall be lifted 
up into a calm region, above all worldly disquiet ; 
above the reach of it. Safe in Christ's hand : sure of 
Christ's love : it is not " Thy will be done, not mine : " 
it is something higher and better. It is " Thy will be 
done ; for, in all things, Thy will is mine too ! " 



V. 



THE VOLUNTEER ARMY* 



u Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall 
they learn war any more." — Isaiah ii. 4. 

L 7"OU have wished, Volunteers, complying with 



JL a right and decorous custom, to assemble 
yourselves, as a body, together in the house of 
God, here to join in common worship. You have 
concluded, led to that conclusion by your sound 
heads and kind hearts, that in the present circum- 
stances of this city, bereaved of him who worthily 
filled the place of its municipal Head, it was no 
time this for even the most innocent gaiety. But 
you have concluded, too, that there are no circum- 
stances, how sorrowful soever, in which it is not 
fit that we should join together in praying for God's 
blessing upon our Country : upon her defenders by 
land and sea : upon all her people, small and great : 
upon our own souls, and daily life : upon all we care 
for. And this, among other things, we desire at this 
time heartily to do. No doubt, through all the wor- 

* Preached to a Volunteer Corps, of which the author is 
chaplain. 




66 The Volunteer Army. 



ship of this day, there has been the sense of some- 
thing lost : our thoughts have sometimes been of the 
brave old soldier, the gallant gentleman, the down- 
right out-spoken honest man, with the warm heart and 
the open hand, who last Sunday was yet the living 
Chief Magistrate of this place ; and who to-day is 
gone. And it may be permitted one to whom it fell 
in various ways to see much of him, to bear one 
testimony among many to the conscientious pains 
with which he gave himself to his public duty : to the 
chivalrous spirit which gave a tone to all he said and 
did : to his unostentatious but always-ready charity : 
to his willingness to listen to reason : and perhaps, 
too, a word may be said, without presuming too far 
upon the innermost sanctities of life, of that simple 
resignation to God's will which made him, though 
taken away from a happy family-circle, and from much 
that was very dear and hopeful, yet pass from this 
world without a regret, save for the beloved ones left 
behind him. 

Passing from a matter of which it was impossible for 
me not to say as much, it now falls to me to address 
to you some words which may seem suitable to this 
occasion. My text appears to suggest fitting reflec- 
tions. Though the present service, Volunteers, be 
specially your own, you are aware that you are sur- 
rounded by many of your fellow-Christians ; interested 
in all that interests you. And my desire is, my friends, 
that bv God's kind grace, that which is now to be 



The Volunteer Army. 67 



said, may have its little portion of not unprofitable 
thought for all of us. 

Now this text, as you know, is an inspired pro- 
phecy; and therefore sure to be accomplished at 
some time. There will be a day, there can be no 
doubt of it, when " nation shall not lift up sword 
against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." 
But, in our less hopeful moods, we may all have 
thought to ourselves, that it is foretold these peaceful 
times shall come, just as it is foretold that all evil, 
physical and moral, shall one day cease. It may be 
a long, long time till then : Human sin and sorrow 
may yet have a weary time to last. We hardly think, 
sometimes, that the prophecy in the text will be ful- 
filled, till very near that other time predicted, when 
" there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor 
crying, neither shall there be any more pain." Our 
sinful and contentious race must be greatly changed, 
changed for the better, before the curse of war shall 
be finally swept away. For war just means that 
people who hate each other, or fancy they hate each 
other, or are set on by artful men to behave as if they 
hated each other ; shall diligently set themselves to 
do each other ail the harm they can. And I suppose 
that to do another all the harm you can, is the full- 
blown consequence of your hating him. And I sup- 
pose that to the unsanctified human heart, it is natural 
to hate another when his interests clash with yours, — 
that is, when he gains by your losing : likewise to 



68 The Volunteer Army. 



hate another when he thinks differently from you on 
some question on which you feel keenly ; likewise to 
hate another when he is more successful in any way 
than you, — which indeed is to some the most insuf- 
ferable of all provocation. Of course, in war, the 
disposition to do harm to those regarded as enemies 
is allowed to run to a length elsewhere quite un- 
known : but even in . the trimness and restraint of 
ordinary social life in a civilised country, you may 
see abundant proof how natural war is to fallen man. 
Doubtless we ought in honour to prefer one another. 
No one should go beyond a neighbour in any matter. 
We should love our neighbour as ourself and seek his 
good as our own. We ought, in shorty all to be filled 
with the spirit of Christ, and to love as brethren and 
live in peace. But you know there is nearly as little 
of that in civilised lands and among professed Chris- 
tian people as elsewhere. Men are ready to stand 
up keenly for their own advantage ; and keenly to 
resist and bitterly to resent aggression : and there you 
have the very root of war. War is nothing other than 
the fully developed flower of private anger. And 
nations are swayed by the same passions as indivi- 
duals. You know too, how sometimes, destructive 
wars have been stirred up by wicked and unscrupu- 
lous men between nations that had really no anger 
at one another ; no anger to begin with : but it suited 
the plans of wicked ministers of state, and it gratified 
the ambition of the puppet monarchs they governed, 



The Volunteer Army. 69 



to spread the awful miseries of warfare over great 
tracts of this world: and they did so with as little 
regard to the sentient and immortal beings they dealt 
with, as if these sentient beings were the unconscious 
pieces on a chess-board. Now, the only complete 
assurance that war shall cease, must be in the Chris- 
tianising and sanctifying of all human beings. Make 
it perfectly sure that every man everywhere shall at 
every time act on the principles of the New Testa- 
ment : and there will be an end of war. But the 
existence of even a small percentage of humanity that 
will not always act on the principles of the New 
Testament, would make sure of the continuance of 
war. For there would be the element of attack : and 
unless where peace principles are fairly run mad, the 
possibility of attack by the bad and reckless, will 
make sure that the means of defence shall be pro- 
vided by the good and careful. If there be wild 
beasts abroad, the prudent man will look to his locks 
and bars : yes, and will see, besides, to the weapon 
which may save longer anxiety about the wild beast, 
by destroying it as soon as may be. And while there 
remain in the number of mankind, very many of those 
more cruel, artful, and selfish, than any wild beast, it 
will be the sacred duty of every Christian nation and 
Christian man to be prepared to defend life, and 
home, and children, and property, against such. 
And if these can be defended only by the destruc- 
tion of the wolves and tigers of the race, then, with 



70 The Volunteer Army. 



regret indeed, but without a vestige of doubt that 
they are doing right, Christian nations and Christian 
men must destroy them. 

But though war, in a world still lying in wicked- 
ness, will not cease as yet, as it ought to cease, 
through the universal diffusion of Christian principle 
and feeling, yet inferior motives may be suggested 
meanwhile, which may weigh with those who would 
not care for higher. This is a rich country : it is at 
least a country which has in it much wealth along 
with dismal masses of hopeless poverty : and so this 
country has in it much to invite the cupidity and the 
violence of the lawless and reckless, both among 
nationalities and individual men. It would be utterly 
vain, it would be utterly ridiculous, to suggest to such, 
as a reason for letting us alone, that it would be sin- 
ful, and opposed to God's will, to attack an unoffend- 
ing people. That consideration would have no effect 
at all. But it would have effect, and most weighty 
effect, to convince such that there is no use in 
attacking us : that it is quite vain to attack us : 
because we are so well prepared against attack that 
any attack would be fruitless. In the present state 
of the world, in the present state of Europe, I have 
great faith in such a consideration as this. No one 
who watches the politics of nations, will believe that 
these always go on high and pure principles of Chris- 
tianity and right. It is unhappily true, that in pre- 
sent circumstances, whe i a private individual declares 



The Volunteer Army. 71 



that he is actuated by high and pure motives, not 
many people believe him : but when he frankly says 
he is just looking out for his own interests, everybody 
believes him at once. So, meanwhile, is it with 
nations : even with nations calling themselves Chris- 
tian. In the case of any civilised nation except 
Britain and the United States of America, the only 
assurance you can have that it will not meddle with a 
neighbour, will be, that that neighbour is so able to 
defend himself, that it would not suit to meddle with 
him. Though it may seem paradoxical, it is certain, 
that in this age, as in other ages, the very best means 
of securing peace for a nation, is, that the nation 
should have a good deal of warlike spirit. You do 
not run your head against a stone wall : you know it 
would be your head that would suffer. You do not 
grasp a thistle : your fingers would smart, not the 
thistle. It is quite so with a nation. If it can resist 
aggression, it is left in peace. If it is the aggressor 
that is sure to suffer, it is left in peace. You know it 
does not do in private life to be too amiable. People 
will come to presume on you : to take advantage of 
you. A certain potentiality of even what may be 
called ill temper, on due occasion, has its uses. I 
beg that no one will misunderstand me : I speak as 
to wise men, and Christian men. You remember the 
well-known motto of our couniry : No one shall 
molest me with impunity. That being understood, 
no one will molest at all. I counsel nothing revenge- 



72 The Volunteer Army. 



riil : nothing spiteful. I am thinking of the retribu- 
tion which, by the nature of things, must follow an 
unjust attack on one strong enough to resist it. I 
am thinking of nothing further than the damage 
which the maker of the unjust attack will needs bring 
upon himself. 

Let me now go on to say, that the great test of the 
efficiency of some machinery, is, that it should seldom 
or never need to be used. People know so well it is 
there, and know so well it is ready for work, that they 
do not provoke it. And that is the proof that it is 
doing what it was meant to do. There are in this 
world what may be called Deterrent Agencies : en- 
gines made, and most carefully made, not (if possible) 
to be used. The more common type of engine, is 
that which is made for use. There is such a thing 
as the machine you make \ and as you make it, you 
hope it will be often used. Such a thing is a loco- 
motive steam-engine. It would be a miserable dis- 
appointment to the ingenious men who planned it 
out. and made it, till it stood complete, a miracle of 
strength and speed: if, after it was brought to per- 
fection, you locked it up in the railway shed, to stand 
idle there. But there is another type of engine, of 
instrument, upon which abundance of ingenuity, of 
strength, of expense, is lavished : to a very different 
purpose. There is such a thing as the instrument you 
make; and polish and prepare to the very best of 
your power : hoping earnestly (if you be a right- 



The Volunteer Army. 73 

hearted person) that it may never be used. For 
what is the sword-blade so carefully tempered, and 
fashioned with a woful calculation? Why, that it 
may kill ! That it may be able to make some poor 
wife a broken-hearted widow ; some poor little child 
fatherless ! But the brave soldier, as he buckles on 
his sword, though knowing what he may need to do 
with it, hopes he may never need ! The rifled 
casnon is carefully designed (possibly by a good 
kind man that would not kill a fly) to deal death 
upon his fellow-creatures, miles off : the explosive 
shell skilfully calculated to cast around those death- 
bearing fragments which have dealt wounds so ghastly 
and horrible upon poor human flesh and bone : the 
iron beak of the war-ship, hidden under the water, is 
designed by all the science of the nineteenth Chris- 
tian century to go crashing through the side of a 
hostile vessel, and send the hundreds, pent under its 
decks, down to swift and awful destruction : but who 
does not understand that it is the most earnest wish 
of all concerned in the devising and making of such 
destructive agencies ; that it is the most earnest wish 
of the Christian nations that number such agencies 
among the equipments of their country; that these 
agencies may never need to be used ? And the 
better able they are to do their work : the more 
terrible and sure the devastation they are capable of 
dealing : the less likely they are to be needed. They 
will serve the country's purpose by exercising a moral 



74 The Volunteer Army. 



force : They will so act upon men's minds, as to save 
the awful necessity of being actually used against 
limb and life. We have been told, lately, by an 
experienced soldier, that the force of even a charge 
with fixed bayonets is almost always a moral force : 
that it seldom happens that hostile weapons are 
actually crossed, or that hostile masses of soldiery 
come into actual physical collision. For when the 
weaker number sees it is overmatched and over- 
weighted, it will not abide the actual brunt. The 
weaker number saves the necessity of the actual use 
of the deadly weapon, by yielding. 

Now, it is so too with moral machinery. When 
Authority is known to be undoubted and strong, no 
one tries to resist it. So it never needs to be exerted. 
But if Authority be somewhat weakly ; not quite well 
grounded, not forcible in its executive : then people 
set themselves up against it : and it must take severe 
measures, even cruel ones, to keep itself in existence 
at all. 

Again, the Law denounces punishment against a 
certain offence. W ell, what is the proof that the Law 
is doing its work effectually ? Why, surely, that pun- 
ishment should never need to be inflicted. The Law 
is not shown to be effectual when a great many are 
suffering the punishment it denounces. It is shown 
to be effectual when it inspires a wholesome fear of 
the punishment it denounces : when those who might 
be disposed to offend are so thoroughly assured of the 



The Volunteer Army. 75 



certainty and severity of the punishment the Law will 
inflict upon every offender; that no one is actually 
under punishment at all. 

My friends of the Volunteer Army, surely the bear- 
ing of all that has been said is plain, upon your 
position, and your efficiency. This magnificent Army 
of free citizens, enrolling and disciplining themselves 
for the country's defence ; — this grand Volunteer 
Army, of which it is your pride to form part; — is as 
truly an agency of Peace as is any missionary or reli- 
gious society : yea, as truly an agency of Peace as is 
the Church of Christ Herself. It appeals to men 
from another side indeed than that from which Chris- 
tianity appeals to them : and it suggests for men's 
consideration a different set of motives, and (we may 
frankly confess) a very inferior set of motives : but 
it points to the same end, Peace. This Volunteer 
movement, this unmistakable indication of the exist- 
ence in Britain of a certain measure of warlike spirit, 
and of a resolute purpose to provide at all sacrifices 
for our country's efficient defence ; I say inculcates 
Peace on all who may become aware of its existence 
(and civilisation does not number many who are un- 
aware of its existence), in as true a sense as our holy 
religion herself does. It comes with infinitely lower 
motives than the faith of Jesus Christ, Prince of 
Peace : it appeals to an infinitely lower portion of 
man's nature : but with this wicked world as it is, 



76 The Volunteer Army. 



lower motives are to multitudes the most substantial 
by far ; and those must be appealed to through their 
lower nature in whom there is little trace of anything 
higher or nobler to appeal to. Such an agency as 
our Volunteer army, with its arms of precision, its 
thousands of skilled marksmen, its hearts fired with 
the thought that should they fight, it will be for chil- 
dren and home and all they care for in this world, — 
it does not say to surrounding nations, Live in peace 
towards us, for it is God's will : but it says, Live in 
peace : you had better ! You had better for your 
own sakes. You will not make anything by trying 
the other thing with us. Yes, Volunteers : that is the 
meaning of your army's existence. You do not put 
it in words. There is not the least need that you 
should. It is perfectly understood without that: aye. 
understood by all Europe ! 

And the more effective you are : the less suspicion 
there is of anything like a mere playing at soldiers : 
the more grave and earnest the spirit in which you 
set yourselves to the mastering of that military educa- 
tion which may fit you for meeting an awful possi- 
bility : the more manifest your fitness for the stern 
work which may lie before every Scotchman and 
Englishman who can carry a rifle j the less likely 
will you be to be called to actual warfare. You form 
part of a grand machinery which every patriot would 
wish to see brought to the very perfection of efficiency, 
in the hope that that very perfection of efficiency may 



The Volunteer Army. 



77 



make sure that it shall never be used. What your 
country asks of you meanwhile ; what she hopes she 
may always ask of you : is rather your moral force, 
than the actual physical weight of bayonets and rifle 
balls. But your moral weight, in the eyes of many a 
possible enemy that is watching you narrowly, comes 
directly of the skill with which, on due occasion, you 
could handle the bayonet and use the rifle and the 
cannon. Not the patriotic fire, which it would be an 
insult to suppose wanting in one of you : not the 
courage and endurance never lacking in the Scot, 
whether Saxon or Celt : not these alone will suffice, 
for these might leave the bravest little more than a 
mob before the onset of veteran soldiers; but the 
actual skill and discipline which come only through 
long and diligent education, some of it through weari- 
some details ; — the earnest training of months and 
years ; — this is what will make you a defensive force 
with which no enemy will care to meddle : this is 
what will make you like the impregnable fastness 
which has so easy a time, because no hostile force 
will venture that attack which would only be to rush 
upon its own ruin. It is a patriotic, intelligent, vast, 
thoroughly-disciplined army and navy, loyally used 
for defence alone, that will make life in Britain secure 
and quiet, like life in unattacked Gibraltar or harm- 
less Ehrenbreitstein ! I said that no patriot would 
wish to see our Volunteers used in the rough work of 
actual war. Not that you would not do it well ; we 



78 The Volunteer Army. 



all know you would : But you are too valuable, — you 
cost too much, — we prize you too much, — to play 
with such stakes unless in the country's very last 
extremity : You are not made to be the counters with 
which despotism plays its selfish, desperate game i I 
know you in your homes ; and by what you are there I 
know how you would be missed : God forbid the 
dread necessity ! But fit yourselves for the Volun- 
teer s possible work : make yourselves masters of it : 
make yourselves the mighty engine which no one tries 
to resist ; and thus which abides so quiet. All we 
want is to be let alone : No man dreams that we desire 
to molest any human being. The end of your organi- 
sation is not defiance but defence ! 

So it is, Volunteers and friends, in the present state 
of this sinful world, our Country, armed to the teeth, 
with her claws strong and sharp, able to defend her- 
self and desiring to attack no one, is a missionary of 
peace. And you, men of peace, dwelling in civil 
vocations, by diligently mastering the art of warfare, 
are hastening the time, — yea, assuring us some fore- 
taste of it, — when Nation shall not lift up sword 
against nation ; neither shall they learn war any 
more \" 

My message to-night, my friends, has indeed been 
very different from that which I am accustomed to 
deliver from this pulpit. I should not feel happy, I 
say frankly, if I often preached a sermon setting out 



The Vohmteer Army. 79 



so ranch of worldly political philosophy, within these 
walls where my great privilege is to speak always of 
pardoning mercy and sanctifying grace : of the un- 
searchable riches of Jesus Christ our Blessed Re- 
deemer. But we are met in exceptional circumstances : 
and I have sought to set forth certain truths suited to 
the exceptional relation in which the preacher and 
those who are specially the hearers stand to-night to 
one another. Those to whom I am wont to preach, 
know far too well what are the doctrines I preach, to 
suffer me to have the least uneasy feeling lest my 
views be misunderstood, unless I took pains to give 
you to-night a sketch of all Christian truth : as good 
men used to do forty years ago, whatever the text 
they preached from. Yet let me, as I conclude, re- 
mind you that without God's blessing, all human 
defences of city or country are vain : and exhort you, 
here as elsewhere, to add earnest prayer for God's 
blessing to your best work and most diligent watch- 
fulness. Let me remind you, too, that only he will 
be a good soldier in the cause of his Queen and 
Country, who is the faithful soldier and servant of the 
Captain of our Salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ. 
And let me ask you to pray, morning evening and 
at all times, for that perfect coming, in all lands and 
hearts, of His glorious Kingdom, which will indeed 
be Peace on earth and Goodwill towards men. Then, 
in that better season, it will not be needful to ply 
human beings with inferior reasons for ceasing from 



So The Volunteer Army, 



all strife : but the God of peace Himself will give 
peace always by all means. 

Now the God of peace, That brought again from 
the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the 
sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, 
Make you perfect in every good work to do His will, 
working in you that which is pleasing in His sight, 
through Jesus Christ : To whom be glory for ever 
and ever. Amen. 



VI. 



THE UNCHANGING SAVIOUR, 

14 Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." — 
Heb. xiii. 8. 

I SUPPOSE nobody ever read that text, that says 
what it says about our Blessed Saviour, without 
rapidly passing to think, at least for a moment or two, 
about himself, the reader of the text. There are no 
words in holy Scripture which more expressly declare 
the unchangeableness of our Redeemer : and there is 
no text whose meaning is given more accurately or 
completely in our English Bible. What the inspired 
writer of this Epistle meant to say, was exactly this : 
that " Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, 
and for ever. ;; And who could read that, and not 
think, How unlike me, and mine ! 

It is just commonplaces that touch us most : unless 
we be exceptional persons, not easily touched at all. 
A commonplace means something that multitudes of 
human beings have felt ; and a great many have said, 
And one of the most unutterably touching of all these, 
is the thought of the lapse of time ; and the changes 



82 The Unchanging Saviour. 

which that works upon ourselves, and all we care 
for. 

It is a little thing to say, that on this day a hundred 
years since, we, who are here to-day under this roof, 
had no being. There was such a day • dawn, mid- 
day, evening : but we were not here to know of it. 
It is a little thing to say, that on this day a hundred 
years hence, we shall every one of us be gone from 
this world. It is not the total change of birth and 
death which is the most touching thing: It is the 
gradual change which passes over us, while we are 
still the same people, going on through this life. You 
cannot see, in the care-worn, aging face of advancing 
years, the rosy face of the little child. And far 
greater than any change on outward features, is the 
change which time works upon the soul within, its 
feelings, its hopes, its views, its character. When you 
go back, in no more than middle age, to the home ot 
your childhood ; and the old time comes over you, 
with its countless remembrances of your early self, 
and the faces, the voices, the days that are gone : 
what can you say ? There are thoughts too deep for 
tears ; and infinitely incapable of expression. 

Sometimes we have all thought, Now, we should 
like to stand still : stand still in this or that. These 
pleasant surroundings : these decided convictions : 
this healthful, cheerful, kindly, devout mood of soul : 
would that we could just keep them all ! Your home : 
your little children : your dear friends of daily con- 



The Unchanging Saviour, 83 



verse : You wish that nobody would ever grow older ; 
that nobody would ever die, You would like things 
in the Church, in the country, in the parish, to keep 
on as you have grown attached to them. But the 
irresistible tide moves onward. The old order must 
give place to the new. And in a hundred ways we 
are made to feel that we have not found our resting- 
place ; that we never shall find it here. 

So we come back to our text, which tells us of One 
Who never changes : u Jesus Christ, the same yester- 
day, and to-day, and for ever." Not only does the 
association of utter unlikeness make us changing 
creatures in a changing world naturally pass from the 
one thought to the other : but there is the special 
interest with which we look at any quality which we 
ourselves have nothing like. There is, to us. some- 
thing of sublimity even about things which, though 
passing away, are doing that so slowly, that in 
comparison with us, they are unchanging. A great 
building, which has outlasted by centuries the hands 
that raised it : a great mountain : the unchanged sea, 
that doubtless looks to our eyes and sounds in our 
ears as it did ages since to those gone and forgot : it 
is so with these. But in the case of such things, their 
immutability only repels us. It seems to bid us keep 
our distance. And we turn away now from them all. 
to think, for the remainder of our morning medita- 
tion, of our unchanging Redeemer : the same, indeed, 
throughout all ages : but specially the same now as 



84 The Unchanging Saviour. 

when we said, half lesson, half petition, our earliest 
prayers : the same through our own little yesterdays, 
more interesting to ourselves than all the past history 
of our Race : the same, while we bear the burden of 
our to-day : and, as we look out on the unknown years 
before us, the only One amid all our friends and all 
we love, concerning Whom we are sure that This 
shall be the same for ever ! 

Now, when we, with our limited powers and our 
small experience, — small experience indeed of all the 
things which are in heaven and earth,— try to think 
of our Saviour's unchangeableness absolutely, we are 
made to feel how little we can understand His nature. 
And I do not mean by this merely that the Godhead, 
and the relations existing between the three Divine 
Persons Who make up that mysterious Trinity in 
Unity, are inscrutable by our understanding : I mean 
that even in our Blessed Redeemer, in union with 
Whom is our life, our salvation, and Whom to know 
is our life eternal, it is so little a part we know, or 
can know here : there is so much about that kindest 
and most familiar face and heart which are utterly 
strange. When we were younger by a great deal, we 
used all to have an unexpressed but deep feeling that 
we should like to keep any very dear friend all to our- 
selves : and in those days, when a parent or near 
friend was all in all to us, we were startled w r hen we 
got a glimpse of such a one's wider relations to many 
others ; when we were made to feel how far we were 



The Unchanging Saviour. 85 

from being all in all to him. So we sometimes feel it 
with our Divine Saviour. He is everything to us : 
everything to our race : everything in our own little 
life and history and interests : but how little we 
understand of what the Infinite God the Son may 
be to other orders of beings, and in all the countless 
relations of this universe He made : and how humbly 
we must speak of Him, how reverently, in what simple 
adherence to the truth as it is revealed, — when we 
speak of His Being as it absolutely is, — and so of His 
Divine Immutability! To us, He is the Lamb of 
God, That takes away the sin of the world : He is 
Jesus Christ, in Whom we are commanded to believe 
and be saved. On this we rest : to this we hold. 
Yet we may be enabled to think of our Lord's Un- 
changeableness, in such a manner that though we 
shall fall short of all the truth, we shall not contradict 
any part of it : and our view will be sound and right 
as far as it goes, though doubtless there are infinite 
depths beyond it. 

This, then, we may say confidently, thinking of our 
Redeemer's Unchangeableness : It is the unchange- 
ableness of One who is Divine. It comes of this ; 
That He possessed all perfection from the beginning, 
— perfection in wisdom, goodness, power, holiness, 
knowledge, — and so could not in any way change for 
the better. Neither could that change pass on Him, 
which is diminution, deterioration, decay. He could 
not grow better : He could not grow worse : He must 



86 The Unchanging Saviour. 



abide the same. With us on earth, it is all either 
waxing or lessening : changing to the greater or the 
less, for the better or the worse. And as with our- 
selves, so with all things round us. The days lengthen 
from the depths of winter, till they reach their limit, 
and then again draw in. The tree grows up from 
the slender sapling : matures into the great oak : 
then shrinks, dwindles, decays. The man grows up 
from the weakly infant : reaches the prime of bodily 
and mental strength : then falls into the yellow leaf 
of age. There is no standing still. And if we fancy 
we are standing still, in knowledge, wisdom, Christian 
attainment, it is to be feared we are going back in 
these. In the case of any created being, it would not 
be a good account of him to say what the text says. 
Supposing him to be, each succeeding day or year, 
the very same, why has he not been progressing? 
Surely it is no matter to be thought upon with com- 
placency, that for so many months or years he has 
ceased to grow wiser and better. There was room 
for it. There were unattained degrees of goodness, 
wisdom, knowledge, to invite the most diligent pains. 
It is only as for One possessing perfection from the 
first, that it is commendation to call him what the 
text calls our Lord. This text must speak of One 
Who is verily and indeed God. Had He been only 
man, no matter how wise and good a man, the Holy 
Spirit would never have told us, as a thing to His 
praise, that all the years of His life had failed in the 



1 he Unchanging Saviour, 87 

least degree to improve Him ; and thatj let time go 
on as it might, it would never increase His experience, 
or mellow His wisdom. It is the law of the being of 
ever}- creature, that it must be always moving. A 
rational immortal being must, and that for ever, 
be always drawing nearer God by growing more 
like Him, or going farther from God by becoming 
less like Him. Only God Himself abides without 
change ! 

Of course, you see that we might separate the 
single great truth of our Lord's unchangeableness, 
into many lesser truths, each with its solemn warn- 
ing, each with its strong consolation. For He is 
unchangeable in all that He was and is : and He 
was and is many things. But let us confine our view 
to two : and meditate on these things : that our 
Redeemer is unchangeable in His Power, and un- 
changeable in His Love. 

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day and 
for ever, in His Power. And, if His power be thus 
unchangeable, this follows : that when we desire to 
estimate what it can do to-day, we may take the 
greatest work it ever did, and say, Now it is, and for 
ever it will be, great enough to do at least as much 
as that. I know we may say that our Saviour is 
Almighty : that He can do everything : and so do all 
we can ever need in time and eternity. But facts 
impress more than reasonings : and it is helpful to 



88 The Unchanging Saviour. 

us to have some standard by which to measure what 
otherwise we could very imperfectly know. Now 
think, that Christ is the Creator of the universe : 
All things were made by Him. He was able to do 
that inconceivably vast work, of which it bewilders 
us to think of the smallest part : He is almighty 
now, as on the first day. It was no spasmodic exer- 
tion of His power, made just for once, that made 
seas and mountains, suns and planets : His might is 
undiminished ; and what it did then may assure us 
of what it can do yet, — do any day, or every day, 
for the good, the protection, the salvation of such 
as commit their souls to His charge. What a mighty 
Saviour is our Saviour ! Think, that He Who told 
the story of the Prodigal Son, that He Who dictated 
the Lord's Prayer, that He Who took little children 
in His arms, was the Great Creator ! My friends, I 
find it hard to realise, how almighty was and is Jesus 
of Nazareth, Who went about doing good. Some- 
how, His inexpressible goodness casts into the shade 
His mighty power. Even when He works a miracle, 
we do not think half so much of the strong Hand, 
as of the kindest Heart. You know, it is so with a 
human being : goodness conceals power. If you find, 
and every one says, that such a man is very amiable 
and good, you almost forget that he is very strong 
and able. But it is good for us, and cheering, to 
think that the merciful Saviour, Who always seems, 
somehow, so homelike and familiar, — our Brother in 



The Unchanging Saviour, 89 

frail humanity, — Who died for us, Who prays with us, 
Who looks on with sympathetic eye as we repent, as 
we pray, as we strive after what is good and holy, — 
is so great ! What can He not do for us ! His 
might hath been proved by trial up to the mark of 
making this universe : Less than that will lead us 
through troublesome life into peaceful immortality ! 
He Who " can do everything " is surely " able to 
keep that which we have committed unto Him 
against that day ! " And our lurking unbelief ; our 
distrust that makes our burdens so heavy because 
we try to bear them ourselves instead of " casting all 
our care on Him ; " surely it is silently yet sublimely 
rebuked, when we do but look round us upon this 
great Creation ! 

Yes ; our merciful Saviour is the great Creator : 
and in His power is unchangeably the same. So we 
look back on that stupendous work with thankful 
faith. As for a human friend, it is often a very sad 
thing to look back on great exertions once put forth 
by him, and great works once done. Because the 
thought that comes next may be, How vain it would 
be for such a one to try to do as much now. Sorely 
failed ; sorely failed ! It is sadly the old man tells 
you what he could do once : the miles he could walk, 
the strain he could bear, the head-work he could go 
through. For there are the trembling hands, and the 
tottering feet : there is the mind with its enfeebled 
powers : He cannot do these things now. Yes in- 



90 The Unchanging Saviour. 

deed ; to many a human being there is no sadder 
thought, than of what he could once do. You have 
come in, on a fair summer evening, where with the 
burning cheek and the over-bright eye, the young 
victim of the fell consumption is fading, — fading amid 
the world's green prime : and oh, if you could find it 
in your heart to pierce that sinking one with deeper 
sorrow, how more certainly than by speaking of de- 
parted days, of such summer evenings gone, when he 
or when she too shared the pleasant walk, the most 
vigorous and the brightest of all ! Sore, sore con- 
trast between the present and the past ! But, thinking 
of a power that never can grow less, we can look with 
joy to the greatest work it ever wrought. For all it 
suggests to us is that that power can do, yet, at least 
as much : and so the work stands as a test and 
witness and measure of the reach of that power. 
Wherefore, my brethren, when we would realise for 
a little the might of that Saviour to Whom you have 
given your souls in charge, we look away, only for a 
moment, from the gracious Face we know : we look 
away from the homely Figure that walked this earth : 
we look away from garden and from cross. And we 
think of an Infinite Presence ; and a limitless Energy 
and Skill ; working through Immensity : doing, with- 
out an effort, that stupendous work which only God 
could do. We look back to the time when He 
stretched the North over the empty place, and did 
hang the earth upon nothing : when the morning 



The Unchanging Saviour, 9 1 



stars sans: together, and all the sons of God shouted 
for joy. I do not say that thus looking, we look at 
a pleasanter sight than that from which we turned 
away : Nay, it is not a thousandth part so pleasant : 
but, thus looking, we get some assurance of the 
measureless might of our Blessed Redeemer,— and 
never forget the Lamb as It had been slain ! 

And now, going on to meditate on the Unchange- 
ableness of our Saviours Love, we might follow, as 
to that, the like train of thought. To estimate 
(humbly) the depth and fulness of that love now, 
we might search out the instance in which it is 
recorded to have shone forth most kindly and 
warmly : and then we might say that it shines at 
least as kindly and warmly still ; and that all that is 
required to make the gracious fountain well out as 
heretofore, is that again the like need for it should 
arise : the same distress and want be set before it. 
How sadly we should err, in estimating the kind- 
heartedness of a human being, if we were to take as 
the measure of it some occasion when he did some 
action of signal benevolence ; and to say to ourselves, 
Well, we may depend upon it that at any time, his 
kindness will at least come up to that mark ! How 
often some capricious gush of feeling in a world- 
hardened heart, has led to some sudden act of 
beneficence, that stands out a bright exception in a 
selfish and bad life ! There is a story told, — no 



92 The Unchanging Saviour, 

doubt it owes its effect much to the wa) T in whicl 
it is told (resembling in that all other stories), but 3. 
believe few could read it without emotion, — of one 
kind deed, one redeeming trait that softens to the 
heart the history of as selfish and cruel a man as ever 
waded to fame through blood : but he would have 
sadly erred in his calculation, who should have 
thought he would always find Napoleon in that soft 
mood in which he talked so kindly to the poor captive 
sailor, and set him free. And without going to the 
instance of people who are very great and very bad, 
every one knows on what a number of little fortuitous 
circumstances may depend the mood in which you 
actually find any human being with whom you have 
to deal. You have gone to talk with a man who bore 
the character of being very kind, and considerate of 
all : but you came upon him when he was specially 
overdriven, and worried with a multitude of things of 
which you knew nothing: and you found him, per- 
haps, exceedingly impatient and irritable; and you 
did not get in the least the reception you had made 
sure of. And beyond the uncertainty as to what we 
shall find any one to actually be, that comes of the 
variability of temper and present mood ; there comes 
to many a one, going on through the hardening wear 
of years, a steady deterioration in all those features 
of character which are kindly, guileless, and loveable. 
It is often a sad falling off from generous, sanguine, 
enthusiastic youth, to cautious, calculating, selfish 



The Unchanging Saviour. 93 

after-life, not without its share of that prudence which 
verges to baseness. Sometimes one who has spent 
his days in a simpler career, has come with the old 
feeling to some early companion, who has pushed his 
w r ay in the great world, thinking to find his old friend 
still the same ; but only to meet the calculating eye 
and the altered manner, that check his warm remem- 
brances and freeze up his warm greeting. Now, in a 
world of these things : in a world where we soon learn 
that we cannot count on even those dearest to us 
being always at their best and kindest ; how grateful 
should the assurance be that our Saviour's love and 
mercy and goodness are unchangeably the same ! 
We never shall find, going to the throne of grace, 
that He has turned impatient and weary of us : we 
never shall find Him so busied with His own concerns 
that He has no time nor heart to think of ours : we 
never shall find in Him a trace of that wilfulness 
which cleaves to poor humanity even when we are 
ashamed of it, which makes a human being who is 
kind and patient and reasonable one day, fretful and 
chilly and capricious the next : we cannot go wrong 
when w r e take Him as He said or did what touches 
us as His very kindest, and then say that to-day and 
for ever, every soul that goes to Him in faith and 
penitence, will find Him kind and gracious as then. 

For measure of His power, we thought of Crea- 
tion : For example of His kindness, we may open 
the Gospel history anywhere. And, desiring so to 



94 The Unchanging Saviour. 

"know the love of Christ" that we may confide all 
that concerns us to Him. possibly each has his own 
little point in the compassionate story, that comes 
most touchingly home to himself. We might stand 
by as He blessed the little children : and see how 
they, sharp judges and readers of the heart if not the 
head, came so naturally to His knee. We might look 
at Him. bending over the death-bed of the Ruler's 
little girl: and waking her from her cold sleep with 
words so gently sympathetic, that if she lived to be 
gray, that little girl never would forget, that the 
kindest words that ever were said to her, were said, 
not by her mother, but by her Saviour ! We might 
mark, not without awe, in the thought that Christ has 
wept over souls He could not save, how, drawing near 
to Jerusalem at that last passover-season, He mourned 
over the guilty city that would not be redeemed. Or. 
solemnly recalling Gethsemane and Calvary, the un- 
known Agony, the desertion and death upon the 
cross ; and remembering that it was love to man that 
made Him willingly drink that cup of sorrow : we 
might rest in this, that in this hour, His love is warm 
as then. For we know that now. unchanged and 
unchangeable, in the glorified Redeemer above, 
abides all the love that impelled the suffering Re- 
deemer below : and all the confidence, all the 
implicit trust and assurance of kind welcome, with 
which we think we could have gone to His feet when 
He dwelt among men, we may bring yet to Him, 



The Unchanging Saviour. 95 

Who, though cut off for all these centuries from the 
sight of His people on earth, we know is and must 
be gracious and good as then : because in mercy and 
love, as in all things beside, " Jesus Christ is the same 
yesterday, and to-day, and for ever ! " 

My friends, the changes that have come over our- 
selves in the past, are infinitely touching to think of. 
That human being must have in great measure cast 
off his humanity, who can really think, without some 
stirring of heart, of his own departed days. But yet 
more solemn than the past, is the veiled future. 
Awful, indeed, are the possibilities of future time. 
We shall change, greatly change : our children, our 
friends, all our possessions, all we care for, must 
change. So much the more we cleave to this one 
thing : our Saviour changes not. He is Alpha and 
Omega, the First and the Last. And we do, by the 
grace of the Blessed Spirit, choose Him for our 
Portion. He has taken us, we humbly trust : and 
He will keep us. He has taken, we humbly trust, 
all who are dear to us: and they are safe in His 
Almighty and All-merciful care. We are all minded, 
dear friends, surely: all firmly purposed; to abide 
His faithful servants to our life's end. And that we 
may do this, we will not fail, day by day, in all our 
prayers, to ask for the indwelling in our hearts of the 
Blessed and Holy Spirit ! 



VII. 



THE PECULIAR PEOPLE. 

" A peculiar people/' — I Peter ii. 9. 
HIS is a Christian country. It is so called, 



JL because the human beings who live in it are, 
by profession, Christians, If you ask any native of 
Britain what he is by religion, unless you chance on 
some very exceptional person, the answer will be, A 
Christian. Possibly, indeed, the answer may go into 
much more minute detail : and the person asked may 
tell you something that has nothing at all to do with 
the central essence of religion ; — such as that he is 
Presbyterian or Episcopalian, churchman or dissenter. 
But, speaking generally, it may be said that all about 
us are nominally Christians. And, talking in this 
loose way, you call people Christians without in the 
least considering whether or not they have those 
characteristics which (if the New Testament be right) 
every Christian has. To call a man a Christian in this 
way conveys no more as to the actual state of his 
heart and life, than to call him an Englishman or a 




The Peculiar People. 



97 



Scotchman. It is merely a well-understood way of 
expressing something perfectly external about a man's 
position. 

But in the Christian land, and the Christian popula 
tion, there is an inner circle ; consisting of those as 
applied to whom the name means, not nothing, but 
something. There is an inner circle, of those who 
claim to be really converted people : Christians not in 
name only, but in reality. There are certain well- 
understood ways in which people tell all who know 
about them, that they claim to be such. By becom- 
ing communicants, and going to the Lord's table, 
they do this. By regularly attending church, they do 
this. All of you who are here, profess to be Christians 
indeed : that is, not merely to have been born in a 
community nominally Christian, but to have person- 
ally taken your stand. You believe in Christ, and look 
to Him for salvation. And in your daily life, there 
are certain rules by which you guide your conduct, 
because that is Christ's will. There are various 
truths which you could not have found out for 
yourselves, which you believe because He taught 
them. 

Now we are told in the text one thing about such 
as you : about all real Christians. They are " a pecu- 
liar people : " that is, they are markedly different from 
people who are not Christians. The exact meaning 
of the words St Peter wrote is, a people specially 
God's own ; and distinctively marked as such. To be 

G 



9 8 



The Peculiar People. 



peculiar, in the sense in which the English word is 
used in common talk, is to be odd : to be eccentric : 
to be singular : It generally conveys the idea of being 
unlike other people in petty and unworthy things and 
ways, as to which a sensible man would not think it 
worth while to differ from the rest of his race. But 
that is not the idea the text conveys. No reasonable 
person needs to be told that it is not an affected and 
probably a silly individuality which marks the Chris- 
tian as " peculiar " in the sense of the New Testa- 
ment. And if it were not that facts show that it is 
very necessary to say it, you would have said too that 
it was needless to say that the text does not mean 
that Christians, as a class, ought to be known by 
affected differences from the common way of the 
world in little outward matters : such as dress, modes 
of expression, tones of voice and the like. And yet 
there have been people, in our own country, — people 
ignorant indeed of the very alphabet of Christianity, 
though puffed up with the most hateful spiritual self- 
conceit, — who dared to sit in judgment on their 
fellow-creatures and pronounce whether they were 
Christians or not, — taking for tests by which to go 
such things as whether they talked (at least on re- 
ligious subjects) in certain ugly whining and canting 
tones of voice : and whether they had the command 
of a number of unnatural slang phrases about religion, 
which took the place of the shibboleth of old. Now, 
even where the outward things esteemed as marks of 



The Peculiar People. 



99 



Christian people have been of a less contemptible and 
absurd kind than these, — have consisted in little bits 
of social self-denial, forswearing this or that innocent 
piece of amusement, tabooing this or that insignificant 
piece of what looked like ostentation — as when good 
people have maintained that a Christian might drive 
his carriage but ought not to have his arms painted 
on the door of it, — all such tests are utterly bad. 
They are foolish in themselves : they afford matter of 
ridicule to the outer world: they invariably tend 
towards making people rest in these little things, 
attaching a silly importance to them, and forgetting 
matters of real and vital importance. A person who 
holds that he or probably she has the distinguishing 
signs of a true believer because he (or she) will not 
go to a little party, or will not take a quiet walk after 
church on Sunday, may not unfrequently be found 
cherishing a spirit of self-conceit on account of fancied 
spiritual superiority : likewise admitting a most un- 
charitable and suspicious temper, which appears in 
the .unlovely form of evil-speaking, and telling ill-set 
falsehoods to the prejudice of those who think differ- 
ently : quite failing to see that these are the weightier 
matters, and the surer signs. 

But, putting aside surface differences, let us get on 
to deeper characteristics. And knowing, as we all 
know, that there are worldly principles on which 
worldly people act, which we feel to be in many 
cases low and bad principles, and not at all such as 



L OF C. 



ioo The Peculiar People. 



Christ would approve; I want to ask, Is there, in 
most professing Christians ; Is there, in ourselves ; 
really any difference? Are we, who call ourselves 
Christian people, quite different from those who do 
not pretend to be Christian people ; in those respects 
in which the New Testament shows us they are quite 
wrong ? Because if it be not so, there is something 
amiss. Things are not in a right and healthy state. 
We want a note of the true and better life. It is too 
plain to need any proof, that if we are exactly like 
those who are quite worldly people, and who never 
pretend to be anything else, we cannot possibly be 
Christ's " peculiar people." My friends, here is a 
matter to be looked into very seriously. Here is a 
test of how we stand with God. May God's Holy 
Spirit help us to thoroughly probe this thing ; gravely, 
honestly, and searchingly. 

First, take Controversy : a common thing and a 
keen thing in these days. 

We all know how merely-worldly men act, speak, 
write, and feel, when they get into that prolonged 
and excited kind of discussion, and difference, upon 
some matter felt to be deeply interesting, which is 
what we all understand by controversy. The opposing 
persons in that, do not want truth : they want victory. 
They do not want to convince an opponent : but to 
make him angry. They have generally some under- 
hand and concealed reason for holding and enforcing 
the opinion they do, which they carefully keep back ; 



The Peculiar People. i o i 



because if it were known, it would be extremely little 
to their credit. They do not honestly say what they 
think : they do not honestly tell you their reasons for 
thinking it. It is commonly their own profit for 
which they are in fact contending, while they dis- 
honestly pretend to be standing up for a principle. 
And the manner in which the controversy is con- 
ducted, is for the most part as evil as the motives 
which inspired it. Unfair : malignant : dishonest : 
that is what controversy is, or tends to be, among 
those who never pretend to conduct it Christianly. 
The controversialist, in letters, or in politics, or 
aesthetics, sets himself to misrepresent what has been 
said by his opponent : to twist the opponent's words 
to a meaning which he knows quite well the opponent 
never intended : to show that the opponent is a knave, 
or perhaps a fool : possibly to blacken the opponent's 
character : sometimes simply to overwhelm him with 
abuse : in short, by any means, fair or unfair, to 
silence the opponent and put him down. I speak in 
the hearing of many who know the world well : and I 
ask them, with confidence, whether what I have said 
be not substantially true. 

Now, what like should controversy be, when it 
arises among the peculiar people ? Of course, quite 
different from all this. 

In your simplicity, you might even doubt whether 
controversy could arise among Christ's peculiar people 
at all. But if it did, of course, there would be great 



102 



The Peculiar People. 



kindness upon either side : great fairness : an anxious 
desire to do an opponent all justice, by setting out 
his views with scrupulous accuracy, and giving him 
all due credit for honest intention. Of course, there 
never could be so much as a word intended merely to 
wound. The desire of each party to the discussion 
would be to gain his brother : if he were wrong, to 
set him right. And in either disputant, there would 
be a humble sense that he himself might be wrong : 
an always present remembrance that human faculties 
are limited, — meaning by that, not merely (as is the 
way with some) that your opponent's faculties are 
limited, but likewise your own. Doubtless, too, the 
entire controversy would be calmed and sweetened 
through this; that it would be begun, continued, and 
ended, with many prayers. 

My friends, knowing how the fact is, one has not. 
heart to go on. All this sounds so much like a wild 
piece of irony. Oh what a caricature of all this, 
religious controversy has all but invariably been ! Is 
it not certain, that if the controversies of those who 
profess to be Christ's peculiar people differ at all from 
the controversies of merely worldly men, it is in that 
they are far more flagrantly malignant and dishonest 
and unchristian ? It is humbling, it is sickening, to 
think how Christian men, whom one is anxious to 
esteem, once the evil spirit of religious hatred is 
aroused, have spoken and written about one another. 
Such unfairness : such rancour : such suspicion : such 



The Peculiar People. 



103 



uncharitableness : such incapacity to believe that an 
opponent can be honest : such calculating endeavours, 
reminding you of a bloodhound that has laid him- 
self on the track, by every uncandid fetch to fix 
upon him the odium of some grievous heresy which 
he never dreamt of : such willingness to receive and 
popagate the most stupid and malignant falsehoods, 
if they seem likely to do him harm : such things 
as these, have we not all seen far too much of! 
" Charity," St Paul tells us, " thinketh no evil : :> but 
the religious controversialist commonly thinketh no 
good. 

It maybe hoped that most of you have not had the 
experience of that peculiar publication termed a re- 
ligious newspaper," which some present have enjoyed. 
Such a publication claims to be conducted by Christian 
men, on Christian principles : yet some of you know 
that it has passed into a proverb, for all that is un- 
principled, abusive, and malignant. There has been 
such a case, as that a publication of that character 
was conducted on the rule, that however clearly it 
might be detected and exposed in a lie, the lie was 
never to be confessed or retracted. It paid better to 
stick to it. But how deplorable a fact, that good 
men, well knowing this, went on reading and support- 
ing that wicked print, because it maintained their 
peculiar opinions ! I shall say no more of the meet- 
ings for debate of many men, professing to be Christian 
men, than that it is happy that so few outside people 



The Peculiar People. 



take the trouble of attending them. For wrath, in all 
its least creditable forms : revenge, in some of its 
meanest forms : reckless accusations : every kind of 
ill temper, from that hateful temper which sulks, up 
to the less unworthy which flies out in temporary 
ravings ; may be seen from time to time in suci 
assemblies. 

You see then that unless in some rarely-strung 
and nurtured man here and there, not much or 
the especial character of the Christian appears in 
Christians when engaged in controversy. And as it 
is plain that the temptation of controversy is too 
much for most men's Christian principle, and does 
in fact subject it to what is called in mechanics 
a breaking strain : it is wisdom in Christian people 
to keep out of it. But there are things which it is 
impossible for most men to keep out of, which are V 
very searching tests of character : and in which the 
characteristics of Christ's peculiar people ought to 
come out strongly. Let us next take Business. I 
have heard a man of no small practical sagacity say. 
that you never know a man till you come to do 
business with him. This consists with one's own ex- 
perience. And a great many do not come pleasantly 
out of that test. It is to be lamented that when you 
say a thing is a test of a man, it generally means 
that it brings out the worst of him : — brings out worse 
than you had fancied was in him. 



The Peculiar People. 



Now, we all know how perfectly worldly people, 
with no Christian principle at all, frequently behave 
in transacting worldly business. Their great object 
is to make it as profitable as possible : and though 
in many cases there is a principle of high integrity 
which scorns profit made by unfair means, yet very 
often indeed that is not so. There is a maxim of 
English law, which hints the risks you run in average 
mercantile dealing : It is expressed in Latin ; but its 
meaning is, Let the buyer look out for himself* A 
great deal is suggested by that. It is not in any way 
consistent with the Christian ideal, of loving your 
neighbour as yourself. It conveys significantly that 
at the least, if you do not take care of yourself in 
worldly dealing, no one else will : it conveys signifi- 
cantly what some of us have probably found, that the 
simple-minded and inexperienced, making a bargain, 
may get terribly the worst of it. Then beyond that 
taking advantage which is all within the law, and 
which is no worse than sharp practice, or smartness ; 
there is in this world's dealing a vast amount of 
downright dishonesty. There is over-reaching in all 
shapes : under-rating a thing when buying, over-rating 
a thing when selling : there is the dismal national 
disgrace of the adulteration of food, of short weights 
and measures : there are some vocations which are 
little better than systematised lying and cheating. 
These things, in their worst forms, are mainly con- 
* Caveat emptor. 



1 06 The Peculiar People, 



fined to our great cities : but wherever sinful human 
nature is, they may now and then be found. 

How then about the peculiar people, in matters of 
business? Here is a point at which their special 
characteristics should come out very prominently 
indeed. 

It is a small thing to say that a Christian, acting 
out the principles of the New Testament, could not 
possibly be guilty of falsehood, or of misrepresenta- 
tion, to get any conceivable gain. There would be 
far more than that. Loving his neighbour as himself, 
he would of course be exactly as anxious, in every 
dealing, to provide for his neighbour's interest, as for 
his own. The utmost fairness ; the most transparent 
candour ; would be in his heart and his words. He 
would be most anxious that you should know all the 
faults of the thing he is selling to you. He would 
not allow you to prejudice yourself by giving him an 
unduly good bargain. You could send a child to 
deal with that man ; and feel that so doing you were 
safe ! 

Now let me say, thankfully, that I have known 
those who, in all their business dealings, were as good 
as that : Those whom you could not even imagine as 
taking an unfair advantage of any one. But on the 
other hand, I have known people, claiming to be 
Christian people, between whom, and mere worldly* 
men, there was just no difference at all in these 
things. It does not by any means certainly follow, 



1 he Peculiar People. 107 



that because you are going to do business with one 
of God's peculiar people, you will find in him any 
peculiarity, in this respect, marking him off from 
other men. He is just like the rest; and not even 
like the better sort among the rest. And possibly, 
even, you have known those who made a very loud 
and ostentatious Christian profession, who were just 
as grasping, just as unscrupulous, just as ready to sail 
exceedingly close to the wind, as the most worldly 
among worldly men. I do not mention the case 
of such as have devoured widows' houses and poor 
children's little portions, while for a pretence they 
made long prayers and loud ones : because the 
hypocrite is happily an exceptional man ; and Chris- 
tianity is not responsible for him. But I ask you 
whether it be not a grievous blot on the Christian 
character of some in whom we believe there may be 
found the root of the matter, that in a large portion 
of their life's occupation there is little or nothing of 
that worthy and elevated peculiarity which we might 
reasonably expect. There is something grievously 
amiss. It ought not so to be. 

Well : but as controversy need come into the life 
of few, business with its special temptations lies out 
of the way of many. Let me suggest a third testing 
matter which probably will in various ways put all to 
the proof. Let us think of the wide and far-reaching 
question of Self-Seeking. 



1 08 The Peculiar People. 



In this world, being what it is, the wise and 
Christian man must indeed, in due degree, care foi 
himself, and look out for himself and his interest : 
otherwise he will, in the throng and the race, be 
driven to the wall, or even trampled under foot. 
This is a world in which it is quite necessary that a 
man should hold his own if he wants to keep it : that 
is a universal law. Then helplessness and silliness 
are not Christian duties. Neither is it any man's duty 
to sit still in a sort of fatalism, believing that what is 
good for him will come without his seeking or effort, 
by the direct interposition of God. A Christian may, 
and must, see what those things are which he knows 
would please him, and which he believes would profit 
him : and he may, and ought to, try by fair means to 
get these. 

But that is not self-seeking in the bad sense. The 
Christian duty here is a matter of degree. And though 
it may be difficult to lay down a distinct theory in 
words, neither the Christian himself, nor those who 
look at him, have the least difficulty in fact in dis- 
cerning when any one's life becomes a life of self- 
seeking, and when it keeps clear of that condem- 
nation. And assuredly here is a respect in which 
Christ's peculiar people should be known. It is 
surely not fit or right, that a believer in Christ, 
who declares that his best treasure is laid up above, 
and that what he feels to be the one thing needful is 
salvation through a crucified Redeemer and a sancti- 



The Peculiar People. 109 



fying Spirit, should be just as keen and eager about 
worldly profit and advancement, as any merely worldly 
man. You should be aware of the difference between 
the two. There should be a composure, a resignation 
to God's will, an assurance that all things must work 
together for his good, about the true Christian, which 
in this anxious and eager and fluttered world would 
be very peculiar and rare and blessed things. And 
after doing his best by fair means to compass right 
ends, and all with a due regard to the claims and 
deserts of others, the true Christian, as he did not too 
eagerly desire worldly good, so will not be greatly 
cast down if he fail of it. He has a treasure above : 
he has a strong consolation within : and he never 
forgets that a life in this world, in which you fail of 
every worldly end you ever wished for, yet which 
prepares you for a better world and a holier and 
happier life, is not a failure ! Kindly and helpful 
towards others : candid and unenvious towards com- 
petitors who surpass himself : not feverishly eager 
about any worldly prize or distinction : cheerfully 
resigned to either event; such should the Christian 
be. And doubtless if they were so in a world like 
this, Christ's people would be indeed a peculiar 
people, strongly marked off from other men. 

Now, can any average believer look for a moment 
at the ideal of what he ought to be, without feel- 
ing his own heart condemn him? Ah, how very 
different is the fact! How worldly-minded, how self- 



1 10 TJie Peculiar People. 

seeking, how eager for earthly gain, how crushed by 
earthly disappointment, most Christian people are ! 
You look in vain in others : do you not look in vain 
in yourself; for any substantial difference at all. You 
are affected by worldly events just as worldly people 
are. It really makes no difference at all on the way 
in which you take what happens to you, that Christ 
lived and died, and that the Blessed Spirit came ! 
Your burden is as heavy : you live as much amid 
care's unthankful gloom. You are as eager about 
some little success; and as mortified by some little 
slight or failure. You say that one thing is needful : 
but you live as though there were fifty things which 
you could as little do without. I do not wish to ask 
too much : I do not wish to propose either for you or 
me, a standard far too high for poor human nature. 
I know that when tried by the searching test of this 
world's interests, the very best believer will own, in 
penitence and humiliation, how grievously his real 
mood of mind and heart comes short of being what it 
ought to be. There is an anxious temperament, coming 
mainly of physical causes, which keeps many Chris- 
tians on the flutter or the rack, and from which they 
never will be set free till the fleshly vesture falls from 
around their spirit. And it is dishonest to pretend 
that worldly circumstances, with their awful influence 
upon spiritual growth and character, are not things 
that fitly have a mighty weight upon the heart of 
every one who has to think not merely of himself, 



The Peculiar People. 



1 1 1 



but of those for whom he cares infinitely more. Yet, 
with all that, we must strive and pray that we be not 
worldly-minded : the cares of this world choke the 
word. And never is self-seeking more contemptible, 
than when it is thinly disguised under the hypocritical 
pretence of a disinterested and unworldly spirit; of 
high and magnanimous motives. We have doubtless 
seen that, in professing Christians of loud profession. 
They could not grasp some worldly advantage, with- 
out asking you to believe that they did it purely for 
the sake of others, and for their profit. There is some- 
thing that soothes one's natural irritation at a contemp. 
tible piece of hypocrisy in the reflection, that probably 
no one ever believed them. 

You know well, all of you, that these things said to 
you to-day are true things. And they are humbling 
thoughts which have been present to our minds for 
the last half-hour. There is not one of us but must 
have felt them as humbling, if his conscience be in 
any degree awake. Ah brethren, how we come short 
of our high profession ! And even if we have the 
good hope through grace in us, it would not do that 
our fellow-men should know us by our fruits ! What 
more then can we do, but come anew to the Blessed 
Redeemer, whose blood brings pardon; and to the 
Blessed Spirit Who can sanctify these poor sinful 
souls ! 



VIII. 



THE NEEDLESS SHAME. 



"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. 5 ' — Rom. i. 1 6. 
* I ^HERE are various thoughts that come into one's 



X mind, looking at these words. 
Times are changed since St Paul wrote them : 
greatly changed. It was a new thing then, the 
gospel : it was a struggling thing : it had antecedents 
which were against it. And Rome was a great place 
then : mighty in power, the metropolis of the world 
as no place ever has been since Rome went down : 
and doubtless the greater people, and the specially 
cultivated people, there, had all the disposition which 
is found yet in people who live in a metropolis, to 
look down, as from a higher elevation, upon men and 
upon systems that had their origin in some out-of-the- - 
way provincial region. That Judea should think to 
teach and enlighten Rome, would seem to many a 
quite extravagant notion. And it looks as if the 
name of Rome, and the thought of Rome, were what 
led the Apostle to make the declaration in the text : 
as though saying that with a hundred things present 




The Needless Shame. 1 1 3 

to his mind which that would suggest, and which 
there was no need to go over, he yet was not in the 
least inclined to look with changed feelings on the 
faith he had held and taught in humbler places and 
among simpler folk. It is not unnatural to man, that 
things with which we used to be quite satisfied and 
pleased, look entirely different when we have come to 
know grander things : and that homely friends and 
even relations are dropped, as something to be 
ashamed of, when people have pushed their way 
into society of more dignity and importance. But as 
for St Paul, the gospel looked just as good and noble 
with the thought of Rome before him, as it used to 
do when he thought only of how it would do in 
humbler places. He says, " As much as in me is, I 
am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at 
Rome also : for I am not ashamed of the gospel of 
Christ." 

Times are changed, we said, since St Paul wrote 

the words. The gospel is not a new thing now, as it 

was then : it is an old story, though always good 

news. And it is not a struggling thing now : at least 

not in the sense in which it was then. Possibly one 

might be inclined, just at the first thought, if one 

heard any person uttering such words at this present 

day, to reply, Really that does not say* much for your 

moral courage : we cannot see anything very heroic 

in your not being ashamed of the gospel of Christ : 

Pray, why should you be ashamed of it ? Are you to 

H 



ii4 The Needless Shame. 



be ashamed of it because it is God's truth for man's 
salvation : because it is the only instrumentality that 
can purify and ennoble our life here, and prepare us 
for a better life hereafter : because it teaches a religion 
that has enlisted among its believers the best under- 
standings and the best hearts that ever have been 
reckoned among human kind? Are you to be 
ashamed of the gospel of Christ, when you re- 
member Who and What He was? 

We might, perhaps, if we spoke without much 
thought, or without remembering at all a great many 
things we have seen since we were children, say that 
in these days no man, unless he were a contemptible 
fool, could ever be ashamed of the gospel of Christ 
at all. But it was different when St Paul wrote the 
words : it demanded courage then to make the de- 
claration he made. We can imagine, very well, that 
many a man who would be forward enough to make 
a profession of Christianity now, when Christianity has 
grown an eminently respectable thing; a thing of 
which respectful acknowledgment is made by all 
reputable classes of society, whether religious or not : 
a thing which, rightly or wrongly, has established 
itself, and gained a footing which you must shatter 
the empire ere you dislodge it from ; many a quiet 
easy-going man who does not shrink now from 
avowing his belief in the gospel of Christ, would have 
neld off from having much to do with it in its day of 
small things. Probably that race of human beings, 



The Needless Shame. 115 

who are commonly called safe men, who in all ages 
of the Church have largely engrossed its temporal 
rewards, would, in the days when St Paul wrote my 
text, have been specially unwilling to be regarded as 
in the same boat with such a disturber and innovator. 
For St Paul had not the slightest regard for an old 
thing, unless it w r ere a true thing and a good thing. 
He was a brave man, St Paul, living in the days he 
lived in, and writing to the sort of people he was 
writing to, when he said (and we all know he meant 
what he said) " I am not ashamed of the gospel of 
Christ." For in those days Christ crucified w T as " to 
the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolish- 
ness." Our Blessed Master's Name had not then 
gathered the sublime associations of all inexpressible 
goodness and greatness which have now made it a 
Name which is above every name : it then only 
designated one but recently put to a malefactor's 
death of character the most degrading. The Cross 
was then an emblem of shame : it was the accursed 
tree : men did not know that ages w T ould come in 
which that form should be deemed of all the most 
sacred ; not to be hidden away, as something by all 
means to be forgotten, but blazoned before all who 
had eyes to see : recalled by the very ground-plan of 
every church, borne on high by every gable, carried 
aloft by every spire and dome, as though silently yet 
unceasingly to signify how Christian people gloried in 
the cross of Christ. 



1 1 6 The Needless Shame. 



These are some natural reflections which midit 

o 

arise in our minds, on first glancing at the text. 
Perhaps they are the natural reflections under the 
circumstances. It needed resolution in St Paul to 
say his famous words : but it needs no great moral 
courage to say as much now. Nobody is ashamed of 
the gospel of Christ now-a-days. A man, in a Scotch 
parish, might hesitate a little before he would frankly 
confess to you that he never went to church, never 
was a communicant, never read his Bible, never 
prayed : but no one would be ashamed to tell you 
that Sunday after Sunday found him in his place in 
the sanctuary; that morning and evening he had 
family prayers in his house • that on every opportunity 
he came to the communion-table. Good taste makes 
people backward to cry themselves up : but in simple 
folk, in whom that eminently artificial refinement does 
not exist, one has witnessed a tendency to bring out, 
with a child-like pride not without something touching 
in it, how much their life is influenced by the precepts 
and spirit of the gospel of Christ. But what I desire 
that we may all be enabled to do, this day, is to look 
deeper into all this. Let us seriously think whether 
there be not something very common among pro- 
fessing Christians, which is exceedingly like being 
ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Let us look into 
ourselves, into our own feelings and conduct, and think 
whether there may not be times, and places, and 
circles of society, in which Christians, both old and 



The Needless Shame. 



117 



young, are tempted, and that strongly, to sink the 
Christian for the time being; to hide their colours \ to 
be very quiet about their Christian profession ; and 
willingly to pass for being no better than other 
people : no more precise in conduct, no more 
guarded in what they say, no less sharp at taking 
up a doubtful jest, no more anxious that their life 
should be squared to the morality of the Sermon on 
the Mount and the example of the Saviour. In 
short, brethren, let us see, with a suitable gravity and 
earnestness, whether all of us have not sometimes 
been what at a first glance we might think no reason- 
able man ever could be, — " ashamed of the gospel of 
Christ." 

When St Peter denied his Master, declaring to the 
little crowd in the court of the High Priest's palace 
" I know not the man;" that was not exactly being 
ashamed of Christ. Fear, not shame, was the thing 
in the Apostle's heart, which led to that sad failure. 
It was not that he shrunk from the derision of the 
little crowd ; but that he was afraid some one in it 
might give information to the authorities which would 
bring him into bodily danger. Now, when any one 
in these days is ashamed of the gospel of Christ, no 
doubt the end to which that feeling would lead, is 
exactly that which is expressed in St Peter's words, 
" I know not the man." But the inward feeling 
leading towards that end is different : it is not the 



1 1 8 The Needless Shame. 



fear, generally speaking, of any substantial harm, but 
only the dread of being laughed at. And the out- 
ward manifestation of this inward feeling may very 
seldom be permitted to go so far as it did with the 
Apostle. Yet let us think : Have we never, in any 
place, upon any occasion, among any set of people, 
been aware of a feeling which if it was anything, was 
shame of our Saviour; shame of our Christian pro- 
fession ; shame of the gospel of Christ ? I do not 
ask Whether we have ever in so many words denied 
our Master : No one here would do that : I believe 
there is not one professed Christian in this congrega- 
tion but would, if it were directly put to him, even 
in the most godless company, and with the greatest 
certainty of banter and ridicule following the confes- 
sion, yet confess that he believed in Christ, looked 
for mercy through Him, tried to obey His precepts, 
and prayed oftentimes in His Name. I believe there 
is not one here but would, if he were fairly driven 
into a corner, declare and avow his Christian belief. 
Yet I fear, too, that the feeling has not been un- 
familiar to many at some stages in their life, of being 
ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Possibly some, 
who would, if need were, confess the Redeemer at 
the peril of life as did old confessors and martyrs, 
have at some time, and in some company, cowardly 
shrunk away from the confession of their faith ; under 
no weightier temptation than the jest or laughter of 
some contemptible creature whose jest stamped him 



The Needless Shame, 1 1 9 



as a fool. Surely the consciences of some here are 
now silently recalling occasions, on which they felt 
a guilty and a shameful shame of the very last thing 
in the world to be ashamed of. 

Did it ever happen to any here, a workman among 
his fellow-workmen, a soldier amid his fellow-soldiers, 
a student among his fellow-students, to find himself in 
a company where religion and religious people were 
spoken of with undisguised contempt, and esteemed 
as a butt for profane witticisms ? Of course, there 
are circles of polite society, likewise of society which 
is not polite at all, where, if a man soberly and 
deliberately said, that the great thing he was trying to 
do day by day, was to reach after greater likeness to 
Christ and to live more to God and unseen things, he 
would be greeted with derision, more or less avowed. 
Let us be thankful that such circles are few now, 
compared with what they were even within the 
memory of man. Now, did it ever happen to you 
to be thrown into such a company as that, where all 
serious things are treated with levity ; and where to 
have announced you as an earnest Christian would 
have made you the derision of the godless persons 
who composed it : And have you never, in circum- 
stances like these, kept quite quiet about your religion, 
and allowed yourself to be supposed to think and feel 
as the scoffers around you thought and felt? Ah, 
my brethren, you may call this what you please; but 
there can be little question what St Paul would have 



120 The Needless Shame* 



called your conduct. He would have called it being 
" ashamed of the gospel of Christ." 

Then, have you not sometimes done a thing which 
your own conscience condemned, so that you felt 
unhappy all the while you were doing it, — because it 
was commonly done by worldly people around you, 
and because you were afraid of being esteemed an 
over-precise, narrow-minded, and canting person, if 
you did not do as they did ? Now, when you look 
back over your past life, can you not see there a sad 
series of small sins and follies, omissions of duty, 
and transgressions of God's law, done for fear of what 
just those might think, whose opinion was worth 
nothing : done not because you felt the least enjoy- 
ment or satisfaction in doing so, but just because 
you were ashamed of the gospel of Christ, and had 
not courage to say boldly that that must be the 
rule and guide of your life, no matter how much 
amused or surprised those around you might be? 
And it is sad to think how wofully soon this influence, 
which is so powerful a weapon in the hand of our 
great Adversary, is brought into play, to the hurt and 
detriment even where not the ruin of immortal souls. 
It is deep-set in the human heart, this tendency to be 
ashamed of the gospel of Christ ; and it comes out 
early. What makes the young school-boy, when he 
goes away from being under a parent/s care, and is 
thrown among a crowd of young ones of his own age ; 
what makes him leave off his prayers, leave off his 



The Needless Shame. 121 



daily reading of his Bible, and take to a great many 
little pieces of juvenile folly and even wickedness 
which are the ominous beginning of a folly and 
wickedness more mature? Is it because he finds 
any pleasure in all that ? No : he is unhappy all the 
while : he knows he is doing wrong : his conscience 
makes him miserable. But then he is ashamed of the 
gospel of Christ : he does not want his companions 
to know how afraid he used to be of doing wrong : 
and for fear of being laughed at by the worst, idlest, 
stupidest, most contemptible blockheads in the school, 
he does many a wrong thing which it only makes him 
unhappy to do. And so it begins in boyhood : this 
wretched truckling to the opinion of those whose 
opinion is worth nothing : this being ashamed of the 
gospel of Christ : What wonder if year after year the 
tendency grows stronger, to conform to the current 
ways of acting and thinking : and when in Rome (as 
the proverb says) to do as is done there ; however 
silly, sinful, and despicable, all that doing may be ! 
You all know how in days happily past in this country, 
many a man went out to fight a duel, stamping him- 
self a fool by giving into a custom even more irrational 
than it was wicked, just because he lacked the moral 
courage to say manfully and at once that he would not 
do what was sinful and idiotic, however stringently an 
absurd and godless unwritten law required him to do 
that. You know too, how many a youth, going to 
one of our great cities, begins to neglect all his home- 



I 22 



The Needless Shame. 



taught ways of attention to the means of grace, and 
to outward religious duty, for fear of the ridicule of 
the most worthless of his companions. I remember 
well, when I was at College, hearing one student say 
to another, as something to his discredit, " Oh, you 
are the kind of man that would read a chapter of the 
Bible morning and evening." But the student who 
said that had chanced upon the wrong man to speak 
to in that fashion : and he got an answer which 
stopped his talking in that way for a long time after. 
But no doubt that profane talker was a sample of 
many more, who exercise a very evil influence upon 
the weaker among their contemporaries. I have 
known of those who under that evil influence left oft 
going to church, or turned very irregular and indif- 
ferent in their attendance there : and I cannot but 
declare that in my observation, irregularity and in- 
difference about attending God's public worship, 
specially in the young, indicate, and where not 
indicate, tend to, utter disregard of anything like 
vital religion. I have known the like influence, in 
other countries, lead the young little by little to con- 
temn God's holy day, though with a heart that sorely 
misgave them for a while at first : all for fear that 
some people would smile at these narrow pre- 
cisians with their obsolete Scotch notions. And in 
short, every time you do what you know is wrong, 
and contrary to the mind and will of your Saviour, 
through fear of the ridicule of those around you. sure 



The Needless Shame. 



123 



I am that this is what St Paul would have called 
beins: " ashamed of the gospel of Christ." 

And to sum the matter up, brethren : Whenever 
you shrink from owning Christ for your Lord and 
Master, because you are among people who hold 
vital godliness in little regard : Whenever you hear 
religion ridiculed, and let the matter pass in silence : 
Whenever you hear a good man abused or a bad man 
approved of, and do not enter your resolute dissent : 
Whenever, on due occasion, you shrink from testify- 
ing your faith in Christ crucified, because there are 
those present who are so scientific or philosophical 
that they would regard you with a well-bred con- 
tempt, that seems to say " Are you so old-fashioned 
and behind the age as that : J; Whenever, finally, "the 
dread of banter or ridicule keeps you back from 
giving your testimony, whether by word or deed, in 
favour of true religion, and against all that is opposed 
to it ; " in even- such case as that, if there be meaning 
in words at all, you are in very deed showing yourself 
ashamed of the gospel of Christ And common as 
the sin may be; well as I doubt not all of you have 
recognised it now that so much has been said in 
description of it ; surely it is sad evidence of the 
weakness of even sanctified human nature that such 
a sin should be at all? Is it not, in truth, just a 
lesser apostasy? Is it not a symptom which shows 
a pliancy of disposition in the hands of temptation, 
that augurs sadly how poor a confession we should 



1 24 The Needless Shame. 



have made in the days when St Paul wrote this text : 
when imprisonments and tortures might have been 
the impulses to denial of our Master, instead of the 
fool's battery of taunts and sneers? And if it be 
hard to forgive or forget the rare one in the days of 
martyrdom who broke down and failed, — few, God be 
praised for His sustaining grace, very few, — yet there 
were some whom the lions in the arena, the red-hot 
chair, the ghastly dungeon, drove to apostasy from 
Christ : what shall we say of him who shrinks in 
shame from the confession of the Saviour that died 
for him, impelled by no weightier impulse than the 
laughter of a fool ? For I need not tell you that this 
ridicule of religion, which is the great cause of what 
among Christians now may be called being ashamed 
of the gospel of Christ, cannot by possibility proceed 
from any but the fool in the strictest force of the 
word j — but pitiful contemptible creatures of no mind 
at all, and whose opinion is not worth the weight of 
a feather. There might be some excuse for being 
ashamed even of the gospel of Christ, if those whose 
contempt was the cause of our shame, were persons 
whose opinion or character was worthy of any respect 
whatever. But it needs no proof that such a thing 
cannot be : it needs no proof that even a worldly or 
a godless man, if he be a man of sense, must in his 
inmost heart approve the conduct of the believer in 
taking more care of his soul than he does himself. 
And what shall be said, then, of the Christian, who, 



The Needless Shame. 



i-5 



though knowing that God, and all the glorified intelli- 
gences above us, think as he does about the import- 
ance of salvation and the duty of doing right, yet feels 
ashamed to confess that he dares not do what God 
forbids: feels ashamed to confess that he desires to 
be happy for ever : feels ashamed to confess that he 
is seeking to be happy for ever, in the only way in 
which it is possible he should be so ! And graver 
thoughts still suggest themselves, when we recall such 
words as those of our Blessed Redeemer Himself, — 
" Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me, -and of My 
words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when 
He shall come in His own glory, and in His Father's, 
and of the holy angels." 

I have been anxious, in what has been said, to 
take such a view of the sin and folly which the text 
suggests to us, as may be of practical use to the 
mass of a Christian congregation. There is another 
fashion in which men may be guilty of it, in which 
the possibility of guilt is confined to a single order 
of men : to such as are called to preach the gospel 
of Christ. If such, in deference to the prejudices, or 
the peculiar theological views, of any of their hearers, 
— specially of the more influential and intelligent of 
their hearers, — hold back the declaration of any vital 
part of God's whole counsel, — being themselves well 
assured of its truth, but thinking or knowing that it 
will not be acceptable, — doubtless they fall grievously 
under this blame. No doubt, there are unwise 



126 The Needless Shame. 



preachers, who, after giving offence mainly through 
their own want of sense and tact and temper, flatter 
themselves that they are suffering the offence of the 
Cross : and no doubt, in declaring God's mind, every 
care should be taken to set it forth in the most wise 
and attractive way, which is commonly the fairest and 
truest way. It generally comes of mere coarseness of 
nature in the preacher, if the declaration of what is 
unquestionably Christ's gospel is made repulsive and 
angular, and such as the common feeling of even 
unsanctified humanity rises against. But to keep 
back the declaration of Christ's Godhead because 
there is an influential Unitarian in church : or to 
suppress the clear statement of the Personality and 
Divinity of the Holy Spirit, or of the Atoning Sacrifice 
of Christ, or of the actual prevalence of Prayer ; you 
believing all these things, but knowing that there will 
be those in church who do not believe them, or who 
at least would like best to hear nothing about them ; 
is cowardly and unfaithful in the highest degree. Let 
me add, that I believe such cowardice and unfaith- 
fulness are very rare : that probably they hardly ever 
occur at all. It really requires no courage at all, 
now, to preach the gospel faithfully. The courage, 
though a wretched kind of it, would be in preaching 
anything else. And I cannot but say that some 
memories may recall cases in which the charge of 
such unfaithfulness was very persistently made ; but 
in which time, just though slow, did in the end 



The Needless Shame. 127 



most strongly disprove it. You must preach Christ's 
blessed gospel, you who will be called to do so, — 
wisely (which does not mean sneakily) ; yet man- 
fully (which does not mean insolently). Grievous is 
the condemnation of the minister who, through fear 
of man or shame of his message, fails to set out all 
gospel truth fully. But there are few things more 
contemptible, than to set out gospel truth, as though 
gratuitously seeking a cheap martyrdom ; or with the 
air of one who is braving a great risk, which everybody 
knows does not really exist at all. 

But, going back to that form of being ashamed of 
Christ and His gospel to which ordinary Christians 
are tempted ; let it be said that plain as all this 
matter looks to us, with our weak sinful hearts, it 
must be very hard to get unfallen spirits to take it 
in, that such a feeling should exist among believing 
people, as that of which we have thought at this time. 
"Ashamed of the gospel of Christ!" Why, is not 
shame the feeling that should arise in man's heart, 
when he has done something very foolish, very mean, 
very sinful : and by what strange perversion comes it 
to be, that any rational being should be ashamed of 
doing what he knows is wise, and creditable, and right? 
I can imagine these sinless beings as saying, Surely 
there must be some strange mistake here : Surely the 
shame is ascribed to the wrong people : A man might 
have good reason to be ashamed, if, knowing Chris- 



128 



The Needless Shame. 



tianity was true, he was so foolish, or so wicked, as 
to deride the fellow-creature who avowed that he had 
sense enough to choose eternal holiness and happi- 
ness rather than endless sin and woe : But how 
could it be, that one who had done nothing more 
unwise than to believe the teaching of God, and to 
obey the commandments of God, should ever be 
ashamed that he should be known to have done so ? 
And truly, brethren, when we look at the thing 
calmly, though we are well acquainted with the sad 
fact, we look in vain for the shadow of a reason for it. 
This is one of those cases in which, after the longest 
thought upon the subject, we come back, confirmed, 
to the same way of judging which struck us at the 
first glance. For when you just think what the gospel 
of Christ is : when you think what it is meant to do, 
for each soul here, and for our sinful and sorrowful 
race : when you look at it in the broad first view, of 
an Instrumentality to save immortal beings from sin 
and woe, and raise them to holiness and peace : is it 
not plain that every consideration of what is reason- 
able in sense, and what is right in morals; — every 
consideration of what a rational being would do, and 
an accountable being ought to do ; comes in to con- 
firm the choice and approve the wisdom of him who, 
after taking all things into account, deliberately re- 
solves to side with the Redeemer, to apply to the 
gospel remedy, to glory in the cross of Christ ! 

"Wherefore, let us each one say, with St Paul, " I 



The Needless Shame. 



129 



am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ : for it is the 
power of God unto salvation to every one that be- 
lieveth." And that we fail not consistently to say 
this by our life, in spite of whatsoever temptations 
may come, we here earnestly ask for the continual 
help of the Blessed and Holy Spirit 



IX. 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF HUMAN NATURE. 
" Is this Naomi? " — Ruth i. 19. 

SHE is coming back, Naomi, from the country of 
the Moabites, after a ten years' sojourn there. 
After many a weary step, lightened much, as we may 
be sure, by the companionship of the true-hearted 
Ruth, she reaches once more the scenes that ten 
years since she had bidden farewell to ; and sees 
before her Bethlehem stretched upon its hill as of 
old. She comes at the most cheerful season of the 
year : for it was " the beginning of the barley 
harvest;" and the earth was yielding the earliest 
fruits of its autumn bounty, while the long days and 
the smiling skies of summer had hardly passed away. 
But that cheerful season could wake no gladness in 
Naomi's heart : she could not choose but remember 
how changed was her lot since last she had looked 
on that well-known landscape : and we may readily 
conceive how each familiar feature of it, as it recalled 
the past, made the well-springs of sorrow gush anew. 
The like colours were in the sky, and the slopes 



The Possibilities of Human Nature. 1 3 1 



around were the very same, when she had gone forth 
from that little city a wife and a mother : but death 
had done his work upon that family ; and now she 
was coming back a lonely widow with a widowed 
daughter-in-law. There was but little resemblance 
between Naomi as she had gone out full of hope and 
heart, and Naomi as she now came back desolate and 
drooping. She had stood by three deathbeds : she 
had bent over three graves : her husband and her two 
sons had been taken from her : they left Bethlehem 
when she left it, but they left it to return no more. 
It was indeed the same Naomi that came back : but 
she was the same just as the sere and yellow leaves 
of the last days of Autumn are the same which 
decked the boughs in the fresh green of spring. And 
as she entered the well-remembered street, the people 
gathered about her in wonder. They were perplexed 
to make out the identity : and as they looked upon 
the downcast wayfarers, and strove to trace in the 
elder the features they had known before, they said 
one to another, " Is this Naomi ? " 

It has long seemed to me, as if the subject which 
such words point to, were one of the most inexpres- 
sibly touching that can occur to the mind of man : 
let me now add, when we look at it in the light of 
the religious truth we believe, one of the most com- 
prehensive and most awful. Touching and affecting 
indeed is the thought of the change which even in 
this world may pass on a human being, while yet he 



132 The Possibilities of 

remains consciously the same : but solemn beyond 
all words the thought of the change which may pass 
upon each of us, in the process of that endless exist- 
ence which awaits us when we pass into the unseen 
world beyond the grave. " It doth not yet appear 
what we shall be : " the same in our conscious 
identity ; but grown out of all knowing or remember- 
ing, — either for better or for worse. What we are 
now, gives us no ground at all to judge by, when we 
look on to the never-ending Future, and ask What 
shall we be? O brethren, to think that when 
Eternity has received us, and stamped us that 
which we shall be for ever, we shall have grown 
such that there shall not be found in the universe 
beings so purely holy, or so evil and miserable, that 
they shall be too good or too bad for our associates 
and companions ! And to think, too, that if God's 
Word speaks truth, there is that material in every 
human soul, which just needs to be matured and 
developed, to make us such, that the outer darkness 
shall be the only place in God's universe, whose 
atmosphere and whose population shall be meet and 
congenial for us : while on the other side there is the 
solemn certainty, that to make us such that heaven 
may be our fit home, it needs not a development of 
something which is in us already, but the implanting 
in our hearts of a principle which never grew in- 
digenously there. In a word, the soul of man is a 
thing which naturally, and without tending or care, 



Human Nature. 



133 



ripens towards perdition : the soul of man is a 
thing that, whatever it was once, is now such, that 
water does not find its level more certainly, than it, 
undirected by a Divine influence, channels its down- 
ward w r ay to woe ! 

Such are the solemn and awful possibilities of 
human nature : such is our natural bias towards the 
worse possibility. 

And I suppose that no reasonable person will be 
found, who ever thinks seriously on religious things 
at all, — who will for a moment doubt that all this is 
true. No one can deny the fact of Sin : nor that 
Sin, left alone, always tends to grow worse. Even in 
the most scanty creed, room must be found for the 
doctrine of Sin. Days have been in which creeds 
may perhaps have tended to be superfluously long 
and minute : Now, in many cases, they assuredly 
tend to be very scanty. But if men have any reli- 
gious perception or moral thoughtfulness at all, they 
must discern that human nature is wrong, all wrong ; 
and is tending, in each individual, to always grow 
worse. You w r ould say, that if the man who sees all 
that believes in a God; — if he be not ready to sit 
down in blank despair ; — he would go on to add to 
his belief that human nature is wrong, the further belief 
that human nature needs to be set right ; — set right 
by Redemption, set right by Regeneration : — w T ashed 
in Christ's blood, — changed utterly by the Holy Spirit. 
I see not at what point the man who rejects these 



134 



The Possibilities of 



blessed truths can stop, before reaching utter unbelief, 
and blank despair ! 

We thank God, through Jesus Christ, that we 
believe these great truths, and cleave to them : that 
we are not more assured by what we have seen all 
our lives and by all we have read in histories, of man's 
Ruin : than we are assured by His blessed Word and 
Spirit of Redemption and Regeneration. We know 
the Disease, but we know the Remedy : We are sure 
of the Need, but likewise of the rich Supply. We 
know that things are wrong ; but we know what will 
set them right. If we did not know all this, then it 
were better we had never been born. 

Now, do you, believing all you believe, ever give a 
little quiet time to thinking of the possibilities that lie 
before you : to thinking of the change that may pass 
upon you, while yet you will know you are the same 
person you are now? You know that here, for long 
times in our life, we keep (in outward appearance at 
least) much the same. Each Sunday sees the con- 
gregation looking just as it did the last. There is a 
change indeed, but it comes very gradually. Yet the 
hair grows gray : the lines on the face grow deeper. 
The greatness of the way is telling on all. The heart 
is far less hopeful : the step is less active. Does it 
sometimes come across you, with something of a 
start, that things cannot always go on in your lot as 
they are going now? Perhaps, even in earlier days, 
there has appeared to each of us as it were a sudden 



Human Nature. 



135 



rift in the clouds that conceal the future, and we have 
seen the way, far ahead, — the dusty way, — and an 
aged pilgrim pacing slowly along it ; and in that aged 
figure we have each recognised our own young self. 
But I am thinking now of an outlook, more solemn 
by far. Do you sometimes try to look on, beyond 
this present life : Do you remember how, after a 
while, we are each going away ; going away into a 
world we cannot see, and as for our life there, we 
know so infinitely little : yet we know this, that we 
are to live there very long, inimitably long : all the 
years here are nothing, even of the longest life, com- 
pared with the life there ; and all the changes upon 
us here even in the longest life are nothing to the in- 
conceivable changes which may pass upon us there : 
Think of going on and on and on There, year after 
year, century after century, — you and I growing older 
by far than Methuselah, — and each of us growing 
into God knows what, either in good or evil : Think 
of days, thousands of years after this, when all our 
life here shall look like a speck away in the distant 
past; and all the things we care for now be gone; 
we such changed creatures, living in a changed world, 
among things all changed ! Now, when you think of 
that immeasurably long life, that awful life, with its 
aw^ful possibilities, do you remember, solemnly re- 
member, that it is only by being in Christ that you 
can feel safe as to what you may come to be : that 
atvay from Him, and unhelped by His great Atone- 



136 The Possibilities of 

ment, there is no limit as to what we may grow, in 
sin and wretchedness and ruin : that we never can 
feel the least safety, looking on to our future life, 
that future life which it is impossible to lay down or 
escape from, unless we have been regenerated by the 
Holy Ghost, and so the evil germ in our nature ex- 
tirpated ! Oh, who will face that awful Hereafter, 
that long eternity, with its possibilities of infinite 
change upon each of us here, without having laid 
hold of Christ's great salvation, freely offered to each 
of us in this accepted time : without having sought in 
earnestness to be renewed by that Divine Spirit, Who 
only can make us meet for the inheritance of the 
saints in light ! 

No doubt at all there is an infinite sadness i 
it, when we think of nothing that reaches farther 
than the changes which are sure to come even 
in the mortal life. It is a sorrowful lesson we learn 
as we go on, that ail worldly occupations and interests 
are wearing to their close. You cannot keep up the 
old thing, however much you may wish to do so. 
Personal identity, continued through the successive 
stages of life, is a commonplace thing to think of : 
but when it is brought home to your own case and 
feeling, it is a very touching and a very bewildering 
thing. There are the same trees and hills as when 
you were a boy : and when each of us comes to his 
last days in this world, how short a space it will seem 
since we w T ere little children ! It is strange to fancy 



Hitman Nature* 



*37 



you see all those in your home going on as usual in 
the round of life, and you no longer among them : 
you far away. But yet more solemn and bewildering 
is the anticipation of what and what-like you are to 
be, after you go from this world. No change here 
can in any way equal that great change. And when 
the change comes for which Job purposed to wait, 
doubtless it will be only the first of many changes, of 
endless developments, through those endless years. 
Think, and try to realise it (for to do so is good for 
us), that you, people who are living here a quiet life 
with little incident, must some day go away, each of 
you all alone ; where you will have all these unknown 
things to go through ! Then hold by this : that once 
pardoned and sanctified, though you may change 
much in the unseen world, all change will be to the 
better and happier. But, unpardoned and unsanc- 
tified, oh w T ho can say how you may change for the 
worse ! 

Do you doubt, any of you who are here, whether 
you are really such malleable material that, still 
remaining the same individual souls, you may yet be 
fashioned into something, whether for better or for 
worse, utterly beyond all present conceiving or im- 
agining ? Or, if you are ready to admit that God's 
grace is mighty enough to change even such weak, 
foolish, and sinful creatures as we are, into beings 
good enough and pure enough for Heaven, — the souls 
of believers being at their death made perfect in holi- 



138 The Possibilities of 

ness, however imperfect in it they may have been up 
to that moment, — do you still doubt whether the 
unregenerated and unpardoned soul really has in it 
the germ of such sinfulness and wretchedness as could 
ever make it deteriorate into evil so tremendous as 
should make it fit for such a doom and such a dwell- 
ing as seem to be threatened by certain words spoken 
by even the merciful Saviour Himself? Does it 
sometimes seem to us flatly impossible, that even the 
worst people we know, in our quiet corner of the 
world, and our life free from great extremes, should 
ever grow bad enough for hell? Ah brethren, if you 
are in the wrong path, and are to go on it through all 
eternity, — how very far wrong you may get ! Every- 
body is growing worse, getting farther from God, who 
is not pardoned through Christ, who is not every day 
being sanctified in some measure by the Holy Spirit. 
Now if you are growing worse, getting farther from 
God, even under the manifold checks and restraints 
of this life, think how swiftly and terribly evil you 
might grow, where all these checks are taken away ! 
Many people have occasion to know, that it is very 
much by vague misty prepossessions, never clearly put 
into shape, that faith is eaten away in these days in 
the minds of men, till faith is entirely wrecked. And 
I suppose there is no doubt that the whole solemn 
revealed truth of future woe (whatever its exact nature 
be) is being specially subjected to just this handling : 
this meeting the plain statements of God's Word by 



Htcman N ature. 139 



the suggestion of almost intangible difficulties : this 
half-suggestion of facts which for the moment seem 
hard to reconcile with these plain statements; or 
which seem as though they even cast upon the 
doctrine a certain colour of ridicule. Surely it is 
strange, strange indeed, — that those who remember 
the changes they have seen pass upon people here \ 
the miserable development as years went on of great 
sin and misery from little rudiments of evil apparent 
in childhood ; should have difficulty in extending the 
analogy from time to eternity, — and believing that 
what happens here may happen there, — God having 
told us that it will ! Surely we have seen enough 
round us in our own life, to constrain us solemnly and 
earnestly to seek that part in Christ, and that gift of 
the Holy Spirit, which will make us free of all changes 
and possibilities \ making sure that all will be for good 
to us, and none for ill. You can never be quite sure 
of any human being, who is not truly converted to 
God. You can never know how grievously and 
miserably he may disappoint you : making you sor- 
rowfully to put such a question as that in the text. 
A sad ending, in sin and shame, may come after a 
fair beginning. I do not forget that a haughty 
spirit and a self-confident spirit becomes no man : 
it is evil premonition of failure, and fall. Yet 
the humble believer, deeply feeling his dependence 
on God's grace, and daily praying for it, may yet 
cherish the good hope, that his Saviour will keep him 



140 



The Possibilities of 



in the hour of temptation : will deliver him from every 
evil work, and bring him into His heavenly kingdom : 
forasmuch as, unless there be sore need for humbling, 
the portion of one who has truly gone to Christ, will 
be " increase of grace and perseverance therein to 
the end." 

And now I may well take it for granted that 
nothing has been suggested to you to-day beyond 
what you all knew before. After all is said, this is 
merely putting in a somewhat different way the truth 
which you have been told at least every Sunday all 
your life, that before us human beings there are set 
good and evil, blessing and cursing, life and death ; 
and that what we have got to do here in this world is 
to make our choice between these things. It is 
not a formal choice, made on some particular day, 
just once for all. It is a practical choice, the result- 
ant and upshot of all your life, day after day, week 
after week, year after year. You are working, every 
day, towards another end than perhaps you think of. 
\ T ou are not working merely to earn food and raiment 
for yourselves and your children : there is something 
further on which you are doing while you do that. 
All our work here is either a sowing to the flesh or a 
sowing to the Spirit : It is either a laying up treasure 
here, or a laying up treasure above. If we commit 
and entrust our souls to Christ ; and then try every 
day, by the help of God's Spirit asked many times 



Human Nature. 



every day in prayer, to go through all our work in the 
constant remembrance that we have committed out 
souls to Christ; — then, though we may be doing just 
the common work that other people do, we are, 
through it all, sowing to the Spirit : laying up treasure 
in heaven : growing into that habit of soul, into that 
temper and character, that we may safely go away into 
the other world ; and be sure we shall never be any- 
thing but holy and happy creatures there. Now, let 
us ask ourselves, as reasonable beings, what do we 
intend to do? What have we been doing? We 
have been working hard, each in his vocation, 
labourers, artizans, students, business men, — fathers 
and mothers, burdened with many household and 
family cares ; — working hard all last week : we made 
some measure of progress in worldly work; or at 
least kept the machinery going, and kept the wolf 
from the door : Have we really been doing our work 
as Christian people ought; and so making it all 
Christian work ; and growing, through the discipline 
of it, more like what Christ was? You see, it is not 
an arbitrary thing at all, fixed just at God's will, the 
state of each of us in the other world : it is just a 
development of the character into which we are 
growing now. You will not waken up from death, 
nor from resurrection, any other beings than what 
you are : but you will waken up developed beings ;— < 
full-grown as it were ; all your characteristics and ten- 
dencies brought out more perfectly than was possible 



142 



The Possibilities of 



here; and so infinitely worse or infinitely better than 
perhaps you had thought in this life. But it will still 
be you : still you, as the grown man is the very being 
that was once the little boy : still you, as the weary 
care-worn fretful heart that finds this world too hard 
and heavy for it, is the very heart that used to be so 
light, and to anticipate such a golden future here : 
still you, as the large, richly-cultured, nobly-disciplined 
mind that has gathered wisdom and goodness through 
years of sanctified experience, is the self-same mind 
that once was ignorant, prejudiced, narrow and crude. 
Great possibilities lie before us : we are creatures of 
whom much may be made. Rich attainments in 
holiness and blessedness lie before us, if we will but 
seek them in the right way : if we will but turn into 
the path in which Christ's kind Hand would lead us, 
and allow the Blessed Spirit to do that work on us 
which He waits to do. But I am not going to appeal 
to spiritual ambition : the sobering years have doubt- 
less brought most of you rather to the lowlier desire 
for safety, for purity, for rest to you and yours. If 
you would have these things, come to the Saviour : 
and try (by God's blessing) to bring all for whom you 
care. 

We shall hardly know ourselves again, entering 
the Golden City, if it please God for Christ's 
sake to bring us There. Think : " made perfect 
in holiness:" oh what a change that one thing 



Human Nafoire. 143 



will make ! All that in us which now disquiets, 
humbles, disheartens : all that leads us wrong — and 
we are always going wrong • fairly swept away ! And 
how changed, There, too, some will be, who in this 
world had indeed the root of the matter in them, but 
co-existing with much alloy : good, high-principled 
men as ever lived ; yet with much bigotry ; much 
narrowness; much incapacity of sympathizing with 
such as differed from themselves, or even believing 
such to be honest and faithful : — what a sweeping 
away of unworthy prejudices there will be in the first 
hour in Heaven ! Yes, and doubtless other changes 
will there be found, which come nearer to many 
hearts. The brother that went before us : the little 
child, growing in the Better World, that stayed here 
in remembrance always the little child that died : can 
this be you, so far happier and more glorious than we 
had ever dreamt 1 



THE EXAMPLE OF CHRIST. 

"Jesus of Nazareth, — Who went about doing good." 
— Acts x. 38 . 

THIS is biography : It is a complete sketch of 
a life. 

This is plain statement of fact. If it be really true, 
you could not say less. 

This is sublime panegyric. Speaking of any worker, 
you could not say more. 

Come and let us think upon these words, and 
what they suggest to us. They set before us the 
life's occupation of our Blessed Lord : yet what 
was so only incidentally. This was not the express 
work He came to this world to do. He came to this 
world to take away sin by the sacrifice of Himself: 
to give His life a ransom for many. Yet, that He 
might die, it was needful that He should live. And 
here you have the occupation of His life characterised. 
Every one knows that it is characterised truly. The 
text does our Lord bare justice. " Jesus of Nazareth 
went about doing good." 



The Example of Christ. 145 

So it is suggested, first, that His life on earth was 
one of active exertion. He was not idle, but con- 
stantly employed : always up and " doing." Maker, 
Monarch, Saviour of this world ; Wonderful, Coun- 
sellor, the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace ; He 
spent His days not in idle state, but in real, hard, 
and wearying work. He had not been accustomed 
to idleness before He came here in mortal form : 
" My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," — so He 
said Himself. For Christ was the Creator whose 
mind had planned and whose hand had fashioned 
this world, with all its continents and seas and races : 
and Christ was the Provider Whose ceaseless care 
sustained and tended the endless crowds of beings 
and things which He had called into existence. And 
though now His Godhead was to be hidden within 
a mantle of flesh, and He was to add to it a human 
soul with its want and weakness, there was to be 
no change in the old activity : The hand that had 
wrought so busily in time past, was to be engaged as 
busily still. Now what a dignity does this thought 
throw around all right and earnest labour ! Let such 
as idle their time away, remember that they stand 
alone, a monstrous anomaly in a hard-working uni- 
verse. God is ever working : so are higher intelli- 
gences that are His messengers : so was Christ when 
He was here. The law of work is impressed even on 
things which have no life : All things come on some 
errand on which they are sent by God : Except man, 

K 



1 46 The Exaniple of Christ. 



who sometimes uses his reason to make himself use- 
less, there is not a thing God has made which is for no 
use. The sunbeam, flowing around the blossom, is 
" silently maturing fruits which are yet unseen ; M and 
every wind that blows is redressing some deviation 
from law. Most true it is that " the blessing is in the 
curse : " and that labour, the symbol of man's punish- 
ment, is the secret of his happiness. The very 
humblest, who diligently does the work set him, may 
bear it in mind that work is not only the atmosphere 
in which all moral good grows, all healthfulness and 
cheerfulness, — but that it is a dignified thing, no less 
than a right and a happy thing. I think the day is 
almost gone, in which any one but a contemptible 
fool would fancy that to be exempt from the need to 
toil, entitles any mortal to look down upon such as 
live by sweat of brow or wear of brain. But it is 
always good to remember that our Blessed Redeemer 
was a hard-working man : and hard work is noble 
now ! 

But Christ was not merely doing : He was doing 
good. This work-day world can show hosts of in- 
dustrious men and women ; hosts of people who are 
working to the very extremity of their powers, both 
of body and mind. Ceaseless work and worry are 
perforce the lot of most ; and by choice the lot of the 
worthy among those who might escape them. So 
Christ's life, if we thought of it only as a life of 
labour, might seem to have imitators enough among 



The Example of Christ. 147 

men. Now I am not going to run down human 
nature : a vast deal of the very hardest of our work 
is not selfish : all our best work goes out upon others 
beyond the worker himself. Many of us, who work 
very hard, might take our work easily enough if it 
were only ourselves we thought of. AIM ask you to 
remark, — and I mean no more than I say, — is that 
Christ's work was to benefit others, — not to aggran- 
dise Himself. It was no selfish motive that prompted 
what He did. And so uniform was His conduct, 
that four words serve to characterise the tenor of a 
life-time : and the sum of all Christ's doing upon 
earth can be expressed by saying, that He "went 
about doing good/ 

There is something that comes wonderfully straight 
to the heart, about pure disinterested benevolence. 
If there be any suspicion of the fussiness of a meddling 
busybody, that spoils all. But unselfish, self-forgetting 
devotion to the good of others, must touch any but 
the worst of the race : has touched even them. 
There are few but have felt this, reading the story 
of one who, by his own free choice, in days before 
philanthropy had grown fashionable, would spend his 
time in the gloom of prisons and the infection of 
lazarettos, seeking out woes to alleviate and wrongs 
to redress : and it seemed hardly a flight of poetic 
fancy, that the path of Howard was watched by 
blessed saints and angels, through all the repulsive 
ways in which his burning sense of duty led him: 



1 48 The Example of Christ. 

till at length, martyr of a deed of mercy, he found 
his nameless grave where no friend should ever see 
it; — if the rude dwellers in that distant tract could 
not feel that every man was the friend of him who 
was the common friend of his race ! And so deeply- 
set in us are the well-springs of human feeling, that a 
hundred times has genius chosen as the theme to 
melt many hearts, the story and character of men 
who seemed to live most for the sake of others : and 
a hundred times, specially in the literature of late 
years, we have been told of the omnipotence of kind- 
ness, and its softening influence on the most aban- 
doned of humankind. But, strange as it may seem, 
the passage from sentimentalism to reality is a rude 
shock to some. To go and do the good they can to 
the suffering they know, is just the last lesson some 
learn from reading which awakes a certain kindly 
glow. And there are those whose tears readily start 
at the fictitious tale of a benevolence which perhaps 
had its larger part in weakness, yet who will feel only 
weariness and distaste when we point them to Him, 
whose unwearied and sublime benevolence, amid per- 
sonal suffering which would have made many a one 
selfish, would mark Him, — apart altogether from any 
thought of His Divine nature and His atoning work, — 
as incomparably the kindest Friend of man. 

There is one thing which immediately suggests 
itself, when we think of our Saviour's "doing good/' 
as distinguished from that of human philanthropists. 



The Example of Christ. 149 

In Him, the world saw, for the first and last time, will 
and power working harmoniously together : One who 
had the power to do all the good He wished, and the 
will to do all the good He was able. There, in that 
human form, dwelt at once the love and the power 
of God Almighty ! What could His employment be, 
but doing good ? We hardly need the inspired page 
to tell us, that wherever He found pain or woe, — by 
the wayside, at the city-gate, in the crowded street, 
in the house of death, — it needed little entreaty to pre- 
vail on Him to bid them cease. He healed diseases : 
gave back lost senses : cast out evil spirits : raised 
the dead. Without respect of persons : of course 
without hope or possibility of reward : He did good 
alike to body and soul. Not the good merely which 
man could do to his fellow-man if he had the mind 
and heart ; but good impossible to man ; that higher 
and farther good which only divine power could do. 

When our Saviour healed disease, He attacked it 
directly, and authoritatively : it need not be said, 
always successfully. The earthly physician ransacks 
the stores of nature in search of means and appliances 
which may lighten the sufferings which flesh is heir 
to : but after he has done his utmost, there is many a 
malady to which his skill affords little relief ; — many 
a disease whose progress to the grave there is no 
human arresting. The hectic cheek, the bright eye, 
the singular dwelling on the future, may tell us that one 
dear is touched by that which in a few weeks or months 



150 1 he Example of Christ, 

must bring down to the grave : but for us to think to 
arrest decay, is as vain as to bid the sun stand still. 
And there are many of our race now to whom some 
bodily disability or infirmity is appointed ; and who 
must just bear it : go Gn through life at sad disadvan- 
tage : bearing up as God helps them to do : some- 
times indeed doing the work of life nobly with all. 
But though the blind man may w r rite Paradise Lost, 
he will never see. Though the stone-deaf man * may 
compose the sublimest music for the ears of others, 
he will never hear. Though one, laid year after year 
on an anguished bed, may attain a sublime resigna- 
tion, and a sweetness of temper half-angelic, there is 
no possibility of relief from agony till the place is 
reached where there shall be no more pain. But 
think of One, able to cure all manner of sickness and 
disease, though naturally incurable : giving sight to 
the hopelessly blind, hearing to the deaf; bidding 
the fever stop in running the inevitable course ; 
standing beside the dead, and bringing them back 
again ! A single word lifted up the dying : but what 
virtue in it ! In that kindly-spoken word, there was 
concentrated the reviving influence of many cordial 
balms, and refreshing sleeps, and bracing breezes. 
There were months of the climate of Italy compressed 
within the few moments our Lord spent in rebuking 
the disease : a whole pharmacopeia of human remedies 
in one word of the great Creator ! But how shall we 
* Beethoven. 



The Example of Christ. 151 

even pretend to fancy the rationale of that transcen- 
dent doing, that refitted and quickened the worn-out 
machinery of material life, and called back from the 
other world the departed soul ? What was there in 
Talitha-cumi to do that ! What, in Lazarus, come 
forth ! How shall we speak in the presence of such 
things, unless to acknowledge the presence of God 
Almighty : to declare that infinite power and infinite 
mercy together walked this world, when Jesus of 
Nazareth "went about doing good I" 

Further : let us think that our Blessed Lord when 
here was not merely busied in doing good : He 
" went about doing good." He did not wait till sor- 
row and suffering found their way to Him; — He 
went to seek them. He did not confine Himself to 
one region, but went from place to place ; and what- 
ever place He came to, His employment was the 
same : He was still doing good. Even the most 
energetic of human philanthropists seem to feel as 
though their philanthropy gets dissipated among the 
multitude when they spread it over too large a sur- 
face : and many are found to concentre their efforts 
to do good to some favoured locality ; — to their own 
village, their own parish, their own estate. And this 
inevitably. We can do but a little : and it is better 
to do a little well, than a great deal inefficiently. 
But it did not need early association, nor some sense 
of personal connexion, to warm the Redeemer's 
heart with the desire to bless the human beings He 



j 5 2 The Example of Christ. 

saw. And wherever He went, there would always be 
sin and sorrow. Then remember, the way in which 
Christ did good to all, was by doing good to each. 
There have been many men who professed to cherish 
a warm concern for the wellbeing of large classes and 
communities, while yet they never showed the least 
real interest in the wellbeing of the separate indivi- 
duals of whom these classes and communities are 
made up. This is the quackery of benevolence ; 
not to say the hypocrisy. There have been those 
who made great profession of patriotism, — that is, of 
regard for the welfare of their country at large : and 
likewise those who found even such limits too narrow for 
their cosmopolitan spirit, and who professed to regard 
the world as their native land, and the human race as 
the family for whose good they desired to labour. 
But in the case of some, this profession of regard for 
all, was just an excuse for feeling no practical regard 
for any : and there have been a great many in the 
ranks of this world's patriots and philanthropists, in 
whom the feeling of interest was spread over such a 
space, that it fell very thinly upon each separate point 
in it ; and with whom aggregates were so much the 
objects of concern, that it would be hard for them to 
tell us of one single case in which their well-expressed 
feeling ripened into active result, or of one single 
individual whom it made happier or better. But how 
different with the wide-spread beneficence of the 
Saviour ! Loving all, as no other ever did ; — "loving 



The Example of Christ. 1 5 3 

the world — He had the patient ear and the kind 
heart for each individual sufferer that came to Him, 
feeling as though his own story and own case were 
all the world to himself. Patient hearing : kind sym- 
pathy : effectual help ; every poor creature found 
these, who ever went in want and woe to Christ. 

There is more to be remembered as to our Saviours 
beneficence : Think of the circumstances in which all 
this good was done. For we may imagine how doing 
good might be its own reward ; and how a life of 
active benevolence, once begun, might be the easiest, 
the happiest, the most natural. There have been 
men, the history of one among them has found an 
imperishable record, — who, in some quiet secluded 
spot, have pleased themselves with the task of 
making all who dwelt near them happy. They spent 
their wealth, not in raising sumptuous buildings, nor 
in collecting works of art \ but to the nobler end of 
relieving age and want, and of tending sickness till 
the weary heart gained strength for the rough work 
of life again. They healed differences between man 
and man, and earned the blessing of the peace- 
makers. They had a cheerful smile and a hopeful 
word for youth that had the world before it : an 
interested look and a kind advice for those involved 
in the little fever of life : and for age, looking back 
on a pilgrimage nearly past, an old remembrance and 
a pensive tear. The Christian church rose, at their 
cost, on the slope of some breezy hill ; and invited 



1 54 The Example of Christ, 

weary men to rest, to worship, to be thoughtful and 
thankful : and the quiet churchyard spreading round 
it was the place, where, in a humble grave, open to 
sunshine and rain, they laid down the mantle of mor- 
tality, when their spirit went to that country where 
the cup of cold water kindly given, shall not fail of 
abundant reward. 

All this they did ; and the heart warms at their 
history. Not without some grateful glow, can any 
one worth counting recall the work and name of the 
Man of Ross. You remember how the bitter satirist 
melted into unwonted tenderness in telling of all he 
did ; and apologised nobly for his nameless grave. 
But though such as that simple and kindly philan- 
thropist have their sure reward in a better world, they 
did not miss their reward even here. As they went 
down into the vale of years, did not kind looks, 
and warm blessings, and earnest prayers, make them 
happier by far than kings and conquerors ? We read 
how the stranger was wont to wonder, when he saw 
the white-haired old man, with a bent frame but a 
bright eye, — a look that went beyond this world, and 
was only made more cheerful by what it saw, — 
received by old and young wherever he went with 
the reverence and love due to one but a very little 
lower than the angels. When at length he died, all 
looked as if they had lost a father : and though no 
stone might mark his resting-place and record his 
actions, he had a nobler monument than was ever 



The Example of Christ. 155 

reared of marble or of granite, in the touched heart 
and beaming eye of those he left behind him, at the 
mention of his name. 

But there were no such ple t 5ant surroundings of 
love and gratitude, when Jesus of Nazareth went 
about doing good ! His miracles of mercy never 
gained for Him any wide-spread or enduring gratitude 
or affection. He had gleams of that fickle popularity, 
— and He knew exactly what it was worth, — which 
one day cried Hosanna to the Son of David, and a 
day or two later, Away with Hi7?i, Crucify Him ! 
But He never got a lasting hold upon even the mass 
of the people He did so much for : and as for their 
rulers, they regarded Him with a persistent bitterness 
of hatred, which we should call devilish if we did not 
know it to be so thoroughly human. " You do not 
know the race," said the great Prussian king to one 
who suggested to him something hopeful about poor 
humanity*: But Christ did know the race: a He 
knew what was in man/' and accordingly would not 
trust man : but He went on doing good all the same. 
There was in His case everything to check the warmth 
of benevolence : to sour the sweetest spirit into gall. 
We can make out that His worldly kindred were un- 
congenial : " Neither did they believe in Him." And 
His own experience prompted the saying which has 
grown proverbial, that a prophet has no honour in his 
own country and among his own kin. Those He 
* The words actually used by Frederick were stronger. 



The Example of Christ. 



benefited were often vilely ungrateful : The ten lepers 
were cleansed, but only one thought of giving thanks. 
He chose the twelve special friends ; and one long 
sought opportunity to betray Him, and found it at 
the last. Great numbers seem to have been hope- 
lessly stupid, unimpressible, indifferent, chilly-hearted : 
and to one glowing with earnest affection, bent above 
all things to urge home the great truths with which 
his own soul is laden, such an attitude of spirit is 
just the most irritating and vexatious and disappoint- 
ing of all. Even Christ felt it. " Ye will not come 
unto Me : " " How often would I have gathered thy 
children, and ye would not ! " Xow many a human 
worker, eager to do good ; feeling all this keenly and 
constantly; is tongue-tied by the fear lest he be mis- 
taking selfish mortification for true zeal for God and 
truth. How dare the earnest minister speak sharply 
as to the neglect of public ordinances ; when perhaps, 
God knows, perhaps it is only mortified self-conceit 
at his own slighted services that truly prompts what 
he may think the faithful rebuke ? But with Christ 
there could be no such mistake. The keenness of 
His displeasure at spiritual privileges trampled under- 
foot, was not in any degree abated by any such in- 
truding fear. Christ ought to have been far more 
angry than any mortal man can (without presumption) 
dare to be. And as for the malignant suspicions, the 
slanders, the persecutions, of the rulers of the Jews, 
— even the meek Saviour kept no terms with these. 



The Example of Christ, 157 

" Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers : " sharp words> 
but perfectly true : truth without taint of exaggeration. 
There have been warm and good hearts, that set out 
with the burning desire to mend and bless mankind? 
which such influences as these have alienated into a 
bitter and fierce misanthropy, that cast off all com- 
merce with a race so hopeless, and laughed a sore 
laugh over the romantic fancies of departed days of 
delusion. But when all these blighting and chilling 
influences were concentrated upon the love to man 
that glowed in Christ, He went on loving man as 
before, and doing good to man as before ; unchecked 
and unchilled by all. Some, and some not bad to 
start with, might have wished in bitterness for another 
deluge. But spite of ingratitude and ill-deserving ; 
in want and weariness ; seeing the sin so clearly, yet 
loving the sinner more ; Jesus of Nazareth " went 
about doing good ! " 

So we have thought for a little while upon this 
short text ; which, in four words in our language., 
and no more than two in the original tongue, tells us 
how Christ employed Himself when here. " Went 
about doing good ! " There was but one of His 
miracles which even in appearance was an exception 
to the unvaried tenor of His benefxence : and only 
in appearance was that an exception : for many im- 
mortal souls have been lastingly profited by the 
blighting of that one unconscious tree. There is 



1 5 S The Example of Christ. 



nothing unkind in cutting down a tree to build a 
ship with it : nothing unkind, either, in withering up 
a barren fig-tree as a solemn lesson to the fruitless 
professors of all after time. But now. looking back 
on our Saviours active working, what is the lesson for 
each one here ? It is very plain, and near. Let this 
mind be in you, which was also in Him. Let us seek 
in this to follow Him, who is our great Exemplar. 
Let us seek, by God's grace, to see in His life not 
merely the Example to which, day by day, we should 
strive to conform our lives, but something that has 
in it a real constraining power to assimilate us to 
itself. It does us good, it lifts us above ourselves, 
it draws us to nobler aims, to look at the life of 
even an earnest good man, devoted to what is 
kind and true : Surely we cannot contemplate the 
life of our Redeemer without being in some measure 
stimulated and elevated ! We cannot go back, after 
that, to say and do little ill-set things : we shall not 
fail to have the kind word and the helpful hand for 
every one we can help : we shall not think of abound- 
ing sin and sorrow near us, without considering 
whether there be not some good that we can do ! 
So shall we be u conformed to the image of God's 
dear Son : " So shall we " walk as He walked," Who 
" left an example to us, that we might follow His 
steps : n So shall we " grow up with the increase of 
God, ,: " till we come to " some humble " measure of 
the stature of Christ ! 13 



XL 



THE TWILIGHT MEDITATION. 



<; And Isaac went out to meditate in the field, at the eventide." 



HIRTY- EIGHT centuries up the course of 



X time ; and we are in the midst of the patri- 
archal age : that age which seems so remote from 
ours, and so utterly different from ours. But, what- 
ever changes have passed upon the human race in 
the long time we have named, we get, in this text, 
a glimpse of the domestic life of those departed days, 
which tells us how like human beings are, find them 
where we may. When do we meditate now, but in 
the quiet summer evening : and where, but in the 
field alone ? So, on a day thirty-eight hundred years 
since, the sun arose, shone upon the world, and went 
down, just as he did yesterday, just as he will do to- 
day : and with the gentle coming on of that long-past 
twilight, the same spirit of leisurely thinking came 
down upon the soul of man. We can answer at least 
for this, that it came upon one man : for on that 



— Gen. xxiv. 63. 




x6o The Twilight Meditation. 

day, in its declining light, it is written that " Isaac 
went out to meditate in the field, at the eventide." 

We seem to feel naturally that day is the time for 
work. There is something about its broad, searching 
light, that suggests activity and exertion. The sun 
rises, says the Psalmist; and "man goeth forth to his 
work, and to his labour, until the evening." And the 
primeval curse involved a blessing, when it said to 
man " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread : " 
so true is it that labour, the symbol of man's punish- 
ment, is the secret of man's happiness. There are 
very few, and it is well there should be few, who are 
exempt from that early appointment of the Creator. 
If it be not directly by the sweat of the brow that 
men live, then it is by the wear of the brain : and 
even those whose circumstances do not make toil 
needful for their support, are yet driven, by the 
necessity of their nature, to exertion ; and often work 
as hard to kill time, as other men do to improve it. 
But though work be thus the appointed lot of man, it 
is not meant that his time should be spent in unvary- 
ing work. " Man goeth forth to his work and his 
labour, — until the evening." But when the shadows 
lengthen, and the light grows less and less, till the 
long gray fields stretch into gloom, and the trees 
stand still and spectral : when all sounds are hushed 
that speak of bustle and toil, and the murmur of the 
river, unheard in the light and stir of day, steals on 
the ear, mellowed to pensive music : when the breeze 



The Twilight Meditation. 1 6 1 

has died away, and the tree-tops are motionless against 
the sky; then is the time for the task to cease, and 
for quiet thought to begin. And now that these long 
summer evenings draw us forth, amid scenes and 
memories specially congenial with the twilight, let us 
see whether we may not turn the evening walk and 
the evening musings to some profitable account ; in 
the direction of growing seriousness of soul, and 
deepening earnestness of heart. 

For we must not think that the meditations of 
evening have of necessity any heavenward tendency. 
Isaac, who feared God and loved Him, went forth to 
meditate at the eventide : but many a man who does 
neither can saunter forth in the twilight, and give the 
reins to fancy too. What we are in our hours of 
work, we shall be also in our hours of meditation : 
and if all our plans, hopes, and wishes, centre on the 
things of time and sense, depend on it our thoughts, 
when disengaged, will run in the same channel : and 
we shall be just as worldly when we meditate with 
Isaac, as when like Martha we are cumbered with 
toil. And there is hardly a more searching test 
whether we have indeed laid . up our treasure above, 
or whether we are really living and working as if this 
world were all, than we have in observing into what 
train of thought and feeling our minds naturally fall, 
when left to themselves in our solitary evening 
walk. It is a bad sign of. us if we are perfectly 
worldly then. It shows to what we gravitate. It 

L 



1 62 The Twilight Meditation. 



shows what kind of things they are that we really 
care most for. But it is a happy and cheering 
sign, if it be in some measure with us as it was with 
him who said, " While I was musing, the fire burned : 
then spake I with my tongue." The Psalmist's medi- 
tation, you see, warmed his heart : and the words 
spoken were words of prayer. " Lord, make me to 
know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it 
is ; that I may know how frail I am." 

Now, there are some things to be remembered, 
when we begin to talk about meditation. And the 
first of these is, that if by meditation you mean orderly 
and consecutive thought, moving towards a conclusion, 
then the power of meditating is possessed by very few. 
Curiously, the thing which is needed to help most men 
to get their thoughts into shape and arrangement, is 
that they be required to express their thoughts, whether 
in speech or writing. They do not really know what 
is in their mind, till they are called to bring it out and 
exhibit it. And to some people, not even speech can 
clear and arrange thought : it is necessary that they 
should have to write down what they are thinking. 
You have all heard of that delightful author who said 
that he never could reason unless with the pen in his 
hand. When people in general say they are meditat 
fag, the fact is they are thinking of nothing. There is 
no real purpose or intention in their thinking : the 
mind is just drifting away. Yet we can all think of 
nothing, and yet the mind be anything but a blank. 



The Twilight Meditation. 163 



And the daily occupations of some are of such a 
nature, that they have long times at their disposal 
during which their minds are given up to that de- 
sultory dissipation. Now, any suggestions towards 
making our seasons of meditation profitable, must go 
on the understanding that meditation, in the case of 
average folk, is and always must be this desultory, 
aimless thing. The mind is brooding on a subject : 
but making no advance either in seeing through it, or 
putting it in a better and truer light, or training the 
heart to regard it fitly. 

Then, further, I wish to speak at present of the 
discipline of our restful seasons of thought : not of 
thought implying mental and spiritual effort. Think- 
ing, you know, is sometimes a great and exhausting 
effort. Weighing, under the heavy sense of responsi- 
bility, the reasons on either side of some difficult 
question, whether of conduct or belief : Forcing one's 
self to get free of cherished prejudices, and inveterate 
bents : To such grave departments of that solemn 
ruling of the spirit which forms so great a part of our 
Christian life, I have already turned your thoughts. 
We are to think now of the restful periods of thought 
which implies no exertion : and how, if possible, to 
make these profitable without their ceasing to be 
restful. And even here, we must remember how 
large a share of practical religion consists in keeping 
the heart with all diligence : in ordering the thoughts 
aright : in making God's testimonies our meditation, 



1 64 The Twilight Meditation. 



And the Psalmist puts the two things in contrast and 
opposition ; " I hate vain thoughts, but Thy law do I 
love." 

Further still, remembering that I am preaching to a 
large congregation of professed Christians, and not to 
a picked body of far advanced and firmly established 
believers, I am not going to dishearten you by pro- 
posing, as something essential to all converted persons 
in their hours of disengaged thought, a height of 
devout thought and feeling attainable by compara- 
tively few; and these highly favoured both by grace 
and by nature. It w r ould be very good for us, indeed, 
and a happy sign of our state, if when we go forth 
alone in these quiet summer evenings, our minds 
naturally and spontaneously turned into such a track 
as this : To think of God our Heavenly Father : of 
all His glorious attributes : of all His care and kind- 
ness to our Race and ourselves : To think of Christ 
our Blessed Saviour : of His love : His works : His 
sufferings : His death : His great salvation : To think 
of ourselves : of our guilt, our ruin ; of our one door 
of hope : of our repentance towards God, our faith in 
Jesus, our charity towards men : To think of our 
friends : of their state with God ; of their fitness to 
die ; of the reality of their religious profession ; of our 
hope to meet them beyond the stream of death, and 
to spend eternity with them, after all these cares and 
strifes are past, in the blessed presence of our Re- 
deemer. Well, it is indeed a thing greatly to be 



The Twilight Meditation. 165 



desired that our meditations should be such like : 
Then indeed we should be heavenly-minded. That 
is a fair ideal : but let us be thankful that we may 
be true Christians though our attainments be far 
humbler than that : though our minds, in disengaged 
minutes, run mainly on the little cares and worries of 
our own daily life, and our own little plans and hopes. 
Few here present could probably say with truth, that 
any specially elevated and spiritual train of reflec- 
tion made the staple of their mind's employment 
during their last solitary evening walk : or that, 
unless in exceptionably happy moods, their medita- 
tions through the evenings of this summer have 
been such as these. 

And yet it seems to me as if, without proposing 
a standard requiring unusual mental training 
as well as unusual spiritual elevation ; and without 
making it as hard work to meditate in the eventide, 
as to reason in the daylight : it is possible to suggest 
two or three rules, easy to understand and to apply, 
which would make our twilight musings more profit- 
able than we have oftentimes found them to be. 

One such rule is, during these vacant seasons, to 
refuse to let our minds rest on those little irritating 
and vexatious subjects of which so many are sure to 
arise in the complicated relations and intercourses of 
modern social life. There are human beings who, 
whenever they have a little while by themselves for 
solitary thought, will whip themselves up into a fever 



1 66 The Twilight Meditation. 

of indignation, suspicion, and discontent. They 
brood over the small slights and offences they have 
met : They think over the demeanour and talk of 
some neighbour till they have found ever so much 
evil and unkindness in them : They harp away on the 
disappointments and inconveniences of their own lot 
in life, till their heart is sore with discontent and 
ingratitude. Now, I should be the last to counsel, 
as a Christian duty, that selfish slothful Epicureanism 
which turns away from a painful subject because 
it cannot bear the pain of it; while any good 
is to be got by dwelling upon it. No : look evil 
straight in the face ; look full at this sinful world's 
sin and sorrow; though the sight and thought be 
heavy as lead on the heart ; while that is needful to 
your manfully in God's Name battling with it : batt- 
ling with the little corner of that sad array which 
stands opposite to yourself: It is not from this that I 
counsel you to look away in your twilight meditation : 
though I know it will end the meditation for that 
evening : It will quicken the pulse and step, it will 
tax the brain, it will stimulate the hand to work with 
its might, it will turn you speedily to Almighty God 
in urgent prayer. And, coming to lowlier and more 
individual matters, I am sure that worry must be a 
means of grace, or God would not let so much of it 
be in the lot and life of His own children : Why, it is 
the chief forming influence that shapes the character 
of most Christian people now : and the Blessed Spirit 



The Twilight Meditation, 167 

is able and willing to turn all earthly care into 
heavenly discipline. But though you may worry 
yourself inexpressibly by ill-directed thought in your 
evening walk, you will not get the salutary discipline 
in that way. Because worry, like every other painful 
thing up to martyrdom, is not for us to seek but for 
God to send : It is presumption to try for more of it 
than He makes inevitable : and there will always be 
quite enough without our bringing it on ourselves. 
And also, because it is only when it is met in the 
right spirit that this painful and humbling thing will 
do us any good : and this is not meeting it in the 
right spirit. It is a perilous medicine, remember : 
with wonderful power to subdue and sweeten our 
nature : but, if unsanctified by the Holy Ghost, far 
likelier to sour into wrath and bitterness than to 
sweeten or subdue. "Wherefore I counsel you, in your 
times of solitary thinking, avoid that kind of thought 
and remembrance of which I have suggested some 
specimens, and of which each of you will readily think 
of many more. To let your mind get into that track 
is not merely painful in itself • but it is forming a bad 
habit, and subjecting your character to a malign 
influence. Then, though it is certain that painful and 
wounding thoughts have a remarkable power to force 
the mind to attend to them even when it would rather 
not, yet all this is far more under our own control 
than we are ready to believe. And we all ought far 
more regularly to train ourselves, when we feel that 



1 68 The Twilight Meditation. 



we are getting upon a wrong tack of thinking and 
feeling and remembering ; — when we feel that we are 
going away out of the light of God's face into a 
doleful region of irritation, suspicion, ill-set reflection, 
wrath and strife, to pray for the Holy Spirit to help 
us in that hour of - temptation. I believe that, as a 
general rule, we should be immediately cheered up, 
calmed, and set right, if we did that : the evil mood 
would go away, and the dark hour. We should be 
lifted up, instantaneously, into a higher and purer air, 
where these wretched little influences cannot reach 
us : as a great mountain towers above fogs and 
vapours to where there is only bright sunshine and 
blue sky. I fear there are a few people who go 
through life, trying to say little unkind things that 
may stick like darts into their acquaintances, and pain 
them in times when their minds are disengaged. 
Now, just you pray for the Holy Spirit to order your 
heart and mind : and such people will be as impotent 
to hurt you as a wretched mosquito is to sting you 
through a plate of steel. You will take their measure, 
and know them for the despicable vermin that they 
are. 

So much of negative counsel as to the guidance of 
your thoughts in your evening meditation. Let us 
think of something more positive. 

Shall we think of the Christian going forth like 
Isaac in the eventide of summer, and letting his dis- 
engaged thoughts go out on the beauty of the scene 



The Twilight Meditation. 169 



around? He, no less than the mere man of taste and 
sentiment, can feel and enjoy the charm that dwells 
in this softened light and gentle air : He, too, can 
dwell upon the green fields, rich with that summer 
luxuriance which is always so much richer than our 
remembrance of it : upon the trees so motionless, the 
shaded sapphire of the sky beyond, and the latest 
colours of the sunset as it sinks away : upon the broad 
sea, sometimes indeed a sea of glass mingled with 
fire : and the mountains, softened into enchantment 
by the blue distance. And say, brethren, does the 
scene grow less beautiful to the devout man's eye, 
because he looks through it up to its Creator: because 
that which to the view of worldly culture is no more 
than a fair material earth, is to him animated and 
hallowed by a divine soul that looks through every 
leaf in it : because on everything he sees, closing daisy 
and growing wheat as truly as sea and mountain, there 
are left the traces of the handiwork of the Blessed 
Redeemer, by Whom and for Whom all things were 
made ? Surely the scene gains a tenfold interest, as 
it turns from a mere expanse of blank beauty, into a 
page of deep meaning and endless instruction! Thus 
regarded, external nature is by far more lovely : for 
we all know that expression is a chief part of all 
beauty ; and it is only to the devout eye that nature's 
face wears any expression at all. To the undevout 
eye it looks beautiful; but then it means nothing. It 
is when we train ourselves to that habit of mind in 



i 70 The Twilight Meditation. 

which we are always ready to recognise our Redeemer s 
hand in all He made, that we can see the full beauty 
of outward nature, and enjoy it as no other can. 
Yes, the Christian, if he has enlightenment to see and 
use his privileges, is the man who truly relishes this 
beautiful summer world. Its scenery is for his eye, 
and its music for his ear. It has, not in sentimen- 
talism but in sober truth, much to teach and suggest, 
for which he will be the wiser, purer, and better- 
hearted. There is much about it to soothe and 
cheer : much to suggest the fairer regions of the new 
heaven and new earth where dwell holiness and hap- 
piness. Let us try, then, in our evening walks 
this summer, in this spirit to look upon outward 
nature. So shall the twilight meditation, without the 
least risk of turning to task-work, gain a heavenward 
tendency : and even in the immediate enjoyment of 
scenery, we shall lose nothing and gain much. 

Or shall we think of the humble believer, in his 
meditation in the eventide of the day, as letting his 
mind for a little expatiate over an expanse of time, 
instead of space ? He passes, let us think, from the 
contemplation of the twilight landscape with its 
solemn shades, to the contemplation of that varied 
way along which God has led him from the earliest 
days he can remember, down to the passing hour: 
and as with a softened and whispering memory, there 
come before him the thoughts of old friends and by- 
gone times : of the home of childhood, of the father 



The Twilight Meditation. 171 

and mother and the little companions, scattered and 
dead : of schoolboy days, and the anxious cares of 
after-life, often so heavy ; of losses and gains, disap- 
pointment and success; say, my friends, will this 
lingering retrospect turn to a toil, if, as he holds it in 
view, the Christian seeks to trace it in the times when 
the kind hand of his God rescued him from peril, and 
directed in perplexity, and sustained in deep sorrow 
and slow-wearing care ? Surely the remembrance of 
departed days will not lose a charm but gain one, if 
we train ourselves to read there our own individual 
reasons for faith and love towards our God and 
Saviour ; Who guided us through the perplexing paths 
of life : Who called us (we humbly trust) out from 
worldly folly, and taught us simply to trust our souls 
to Him Wlio died for them, and gave the Blessed 
Spirit to sanctify and comfort us in all our way : 
W T hose never-failing kindness in the past assures us 
against the future ; as we call to mind the great 
Apostle's resistless logic, " He that spared not His own 
Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He 
not with Him also freely give us all things ? " 

They were not the " vain thoughts " which the pro- 
phet condemned, that succession of old remem- 
brances, if in their still procession they brought with 
them and left behind them some precious atoms of 
faith and love towards the kind God Who led us, and 
the kind Saviour Who redeemed us, and the Blessed 
Spirit Who works in us day by day. Not vainly in 



172 The Twilight Meditation. 

the evening walk, shall we live over again that sad 
time in our story, seldom remembered in the bustle of 
work-day life, when death made the first break in the 
circle of our home, and we first saw the cold immov- 
able stillness which makes awful the face that used to 
be only very dear ; if there come with it the remem- 
brance of consolation given by Him Who is the 
Almighty Comforter ; of the blessed trust of meeting 
in a better w r orld ; and of the dust given to kindred 
dust in the sure and certain hope of a joyful Resur- 
rection. Not vainly, summoned up to " the sessions 
of silent thought," shall there come from out the past 
the vision of infant days, when at a mother's knee we 
said our earliest prayers, and learned the first we 
knew of Christ and heaven with Him, if from that 
time, its memories and associations, there comes an 
influence that makes even the faith we cherish and 
the Saviour we trust more hallowed and dear. Not 
vainly, in the eventide of the day, shall we run over 
the career that has made us whatever we are, in 
worldly wealth and estimation ; if from our earthly 
lot, its gains and losses, we turn to our soul's health 
and prosperity ; and ask ourselves whether, amid all 
outward changes, we have still been steadily laying 
up our true treasure in heaven ; and striving that 
from all the dealings of God's providence we might 
draw that education for eternity which the Holy 
Spirit designed they should impart. And not vainly, 
either, shall our thoughts have turned from the years 



The Twilight Meditation. 173 

that are gone, to the unknown tract before us, if as 
we remembered how pulse by pulse the principle of 
mortal life is wearing out, and minute by minute the 
sands of time are running, and how all that we value 
on earth must leave us or be left by us, — if we came 
back to the door of our home with the prayer in our 
heart, that when a longer night shall take the light 
from these eyes, and compose this body to a deeper 
sleep, the Blessed Saviour would sustain us in His 
everlasting arms, and abide with us when the evening 
has come, and the day here is entirely spent. 

And so that unsystematic meditation, which 
must of necessity fill some part of our life, may, 
by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, serve blessed 
and gracious ends. The guidance of our heart and 
thoughts : the forming devout habits of mind : the 
cultivation of grateful and heavenly affections : the 
training ourselves systematically to see God's hand 
and to remember Him : the habitual reference in all 
things to Christ, bringing (as it were) to Him all that 
interests and concerns us : these things make a great 
part of practical religion. And our religious character 
will, in a large degree, depend upon the lines of 
thinking and feeling into which our minds learn to 
fall habitually in our vacant hours or minutes. And 
these little vacant seasons are a crucial test of us. It 
is not outward acts that are the testing things now : 
" out of the heart proceed the things which defile the 



1 74 The Twilight Meditation. 

man : " and to make a holy life, you know God's 
Spirit begins by renewing the heart ; from which ail 
outward acts proceed, and from whence they take 
their character as good or evil in the sight of God. 
And not only is it of vital concern that the heart be 
kept aright in these seasons of meditation : Let us be 
thankful that, without ceasing to be restful and plea- 
sant, without becoming a task, and assuredly without 
becoming gloomy or mournful ; they may be made as 
profitable a discipline as there is in the range of the 
ordinary means of grace. For meditation, hallowed 
by the often-recurring remembrance of our Saviour 
and God, will pass, naturally and oftentimes, into 
holy communion with Him. Not the formality of a 
long supplication : but the brief word, the upward 
look, the silent motion of the soul. And, in its best 
form, yet not by any means an unattainable form, the 
twilight meditation, with all its easy desultoriness, 
might be a time of self-examination : of devout 
thought of God and communion with God : one pro- 
longed yet unfatiguing act of faith and love and 
prayer. 

July ii, 1869. 



xir. 



A GOOD MAN. 
" For he was a good man." — Acts xi. 24. 

IT is easy to think of various words in our lan- 
guage, which, as time has gone on, have come to 
bear a very different meaning from that which they 
once did : sometimes a much larger meaning. As 
men grow older, and as the world grows older, people 
rind that they have been using words which meant a 
great deal more than they fancied they did. 

As for instance : There was a long time that when 
people talked of the Sun, the thing they meant by 
that word w r as a burning disc, about a yard in dia- 
meter, set in the sky not very far above this world ; 
which, in the morning rose in the east, and in the 
evening went out of sight in the west. They have 
learned now that the word means something quite 
different :— something a great deal bigger, grander, 
farther off, and more magnificent, than what they had 
thought. 

Then there once was a time that when people 
talked of the world, they meant a few little countries 



i 7 6 



A Good Man. 



lying aroand the Mediterranean Sea. They did not 
know what vast meaning was in the word : what 
immeasurable tracts of land and ocean were implied 
by it. As for the Universe, human beings, not very 
many hundred years since, fancied it meant just this 
world i and certain sparks of fire, called the stars, 
fixed in a crystal sphere a few miles above the surface 
of the earth. They did not know how great a mean- 
ing lay unsuspected in the word they uttered : — what 
unfathomable depths of space ; what long millions of 
miles ; what gigantic worlds amid which even our 
great earth is no more than a sand-grain. 

And I suppose we can all think of words which the 
experience of our own life has taught us to use in 
quite a different meaning from what we once did. 
When we were children, a year meant a very long, 
— an almost endless number of days and weeks : it 
has grown a shorter thing now. A little thought, too, 
could call up some words, expressing moral facts, 
which once looked like very small things, conveying a 
very simple idea ; but which, now we have read into 
them, we find to contain whole labyrinths of thought, 
great mazes of meaning, dimly discerned, and little 
understood. And it is just because some people 
have a greater power than others, of calling up vividly 
before them all these windings and expanses of 
thought which are implied in human words ; that 
there is such a difference between the impressions 
made on different people by the same discourse, o^ 



A Good Man. 177 



the same piece of printed language. One man reads 
a sublime passage from some great writer : and it 
takes possession of him, overwhelms him, kindles 
many trains of thinking in his own mind : for he sees, 
with life-like reality, something like what the great 
genius designed to express. Another man reads the 
same passage ; and he yawns and wearies : he may 
understand the words indeed to a certain extent : but 
he cannot take in their reach and depth of sense. 
And though this is an example of what I mean, still it 
is chiefly in the case of words bearing a spiritual 
significance that it is so : — that people (that is) can 
make out dimly a great idea looming (as it were) 
through a word, like a mountain through mist ; while 
yet they do not sharply comprehend the complete 
sense which the word conveys. Think of the Name 
of Almighty God ! Think of the word Eternity. 
Think of the words Salvation and Perdition. We 
lose ourselves amid the thoughts these names suggest. 
They perplex : they overwhelm. 

Now it seems to me that in my text, which is a 
short text, there is an expression, which is a common 
expression, of which we may say with truth that when 
we read it in the light of some things told us in the 
New Testament, we shall understand it as meaning 
something quite different, in some important respects, 
from that which it used at one time to be understood 
to mean. And perhaps, too, we may say with truth, 
that this expression is many times used very thought- 

M 



1 7 8 



A Good Alan. 



lessly; and with little perception of its true depth 
and extent of sense. " A good man : 99 the phrase 
comes readily to the lips : it is very familiar, very 
often used. And it is not too much to say, that we 
should not use it so often ; and we should not apply 
it so liberally ; if we always remembered what, in the 
mouth of Christian people, it means. "A good 
man : ; ' Nobody thinks it anything like extrava- 
gantly complimentary language, to call another ihat 
When we call any one " a good creature," we intend 
very faint praise. Many will even go the length of a 
very good man, or (as it is sometimes given) an 
excellent good man, without taking much thought 
before using the expression. It is frequently in- 
tended as a vague fashion of commendation : indicat- 
ing rather one's kindly feeling towards the person 
spoken of, than any accurate appreciation of what his 
moral merits are. Sometimes it means that the 
person spoken of has been useful to us, it matters 
little how. Thus a person who died some years 
since, who though legally a nobleman, was in fact one 
of the meanest and most contemptible wretches that 
ever disgraced humanity, spoke in his will of another 
human creature, who had found it possible to be even 
a meaner and more contemptible wretch than him- 
self, as " an excellent man." And an excellent man, 
as you know, means a specially and remarkably good 
man. 

My Christian friends, we have here one of those 



A Good Man. 



179 



phrases which mean a great deal more than most 
people who use them think. Just as truly as modern 
Astronomy has made the sun mean a great deal more 
than people understood it to mean before : Just as 
truly as modern Geography has taught us that the 
term the world includes a great deal more than 
people understood it to include before : so certainly 
has Christianity taught us that the phrase a good 
man means a great deal more than people once 
fancied it did ; a great deal more than people even 
yet always remember that it means. Very many 
whom the world would call good men, are far indeed 
from coming up to the standard of the Xew Testa- 
ment, of what a good man should be. I need not 
tell you that the phrase was in common use, before 
the Gospel told us its true meaning. Philosophers in 
old times were fond of talking about the good man : 
about his dignity, his happiness, his independence of 
outward circumstances, and the like : but then they 
commonly meant by the good man something quite 
different from that which the Xew Testament means, 
Their good man, in short, was not in any way a 
Christian. Although goodness, in many respects, is 
the same in the New Testament as in Socrates or 
Cicero, yet even in many details of conduct and 
feeling the one goodness is quite different from the 
other : and the two are utterly different in what they 
take for granted as to the great fundamental prin- 
ciples upon which all life and conduct go. And, 



i So 



A Good Man, 



saying this, I am not speaking of that earlier way of 
thinking which made ferocious courage include 
almost all manly virtue : which made revenge a heroic 
duty ; and held that there was nothing worthier of 
man than to devote himself to the destruction of 
those he deemed his enemies. I go on to better 
times, when mere martial greatness was sublimed into 
moral grandeur : into something which commends 
itself, even yet, to the sympathy of those whom the 
earlier notions affect with pure loathing and con- 
tempt : and even here, I say we are constrained to 
confess that the essential principles of that goodness 
are entirely different from the principles of Chris- 
tianity. The type of the goodness lauded by heathen 
moralists is entirely unlike the type of goodness 
found in the Apostles, for example : found, let it be 
added, in our Blessed Saviour Himself. The Chris- 
tian's great object in life is to please God : to be 
made like to Christ : Such motives were unknown to 
the philosophic good man. Knowing the gods he 
knew, it was the praise of one than whom old 
morality knew none better, that that which pleased 
his gods did not please him.* And the pure morality 
of such a man would have been revolted by the 
suggestion that there was one among them fit to be 
made any man's example. Then Christian humility, 
that virtue so essential in Christianity, — however 
approved it may be now by consciences and under- 
* Victrix causa diis placuit^ sed victa Catoni! 



A Good Man. 181 



standings long enlightened by Christianity, — held no 
such place in the old list of virtues. I do not speak 
of pagan self-assertion as its opposite : but only 
remind you how the love of glory, the desire of the 
high estimation of men, was then esteemed as one of 
the highest and purest motives of human conduct. 
And such considerations as the living mainly for 
eternity : the walking by faith and not by sight ; vital 
as they are in Christian morality, — could not possibly 
have been present in like manner in the minds of 
such as knew for certain no immortality. I do not 
say, not for one moment, that the pure morality of 
heathenism, — so far as it was pure, — was not good in 
those who strove after it, knowing only what they 
knew : I cast no doubt on the final state of the good 
among those who never heard of Christ. I believe, 
indeed, that every human soul that ever was saved, 
was saved only through Christ's great Atoning 
Sacrifice : but I believe, too, that the benefits of a 
great moral machinery are not necessarily confined to 
those who know all about it. Yet it is quite consist- 
ent with this to say, that the old goodness would not 
be goodness in us, knowing what God has told us 
now. Vv 7 e must learn, as we look back on it (let me 
say it in the strong words of Foster), " to assign these 
men in thought to another sphere, and to regard them 
as beings under a different economy with which our 
relations are dissolved : as marvellous specimens of a 
certain imperfect kind of moral greatness, formed 



1 82 A Good Man. 



on a model foreign to true religion, which model is 
crumbled to dust and given to the winds." * You see, 
my friends, that if the Christian idea of what holiness 
and goodness are, be accepted as true, the old philo- 
sophic good man, the modern moral good man, may 
be far away from the present standard, by which we 
are bound to judge ourselves, and humbly to estimate 
others, A human being might be such as they, with- 
out one vestige of Christian principle : perfectly un- 
actuated by faith and love towards Christ: and in 
God's view, no better than a self-sufficient, unrepent- 
ing sinner. A human being might quite well be what 
the world would call a moral man, a, good man, a 
very good man, an uncommonly good man, as good a 
man as in this world you could expect to meet with : 
and yet all the while be what the New Testament 
calls " dead in trespasses and sins : " a lost sinner, 
needing to be sought and saved. 

Now let us, in what remains of this discourse, 
seek to gain some distinct idea of what is the 
New Testament meaning of a good man. And by 
way of lights and directions, let us call to remem- 
brance three texts of Scripture, which seem to hit off 
the special peculiarities, the distinctive marks and 
features, of the Christianly good man. And foras- 
much as we are sure that the New Testament is 

* Essay On the Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Re- 
ligion. Letter VIII. 



A Good Man. 183 



God's inspired Word to us, let us regard all this with 
a teachable and humble spirit. We come to learn 
from God's Word. It is there to teach us. So we 
need not be surprised if it tells us things we should 
not have found out for ourselves. It will never tell 
us anything which an enlightened conscience will not 
recognise as just and true, after due and serious 
reflection. But it may tell us things which, just at 
first, sound new and startling : and which we may 
have to turn over in our minds for a good while, and 
to get into the right way of looking at them, and to 
ask God's Spirit to deliver us from some natural pre- 
judices against them, before we shall be able to 
accept them heartily. 

First, there is a text in the New Testament 
which says this : that " Whatsoever is not of faith 
is sin." * Now, I know that of late the meaning 
of these words has been otherwise explained. But 
several of the wisest and best of the Fathers o: the 
Church read them without doubt as meaning that 
(in the words of Augustine) " all the life of the un- 
believing is sin." Then you will remember the 
solemn assurance that " Without faith it is im- 
possible to please God." t And upon such declara- 
tions of God's Word, the Church has founded the 
commonly-received doctrine, that " Works done 
before the grace of Christ, and the inspiration of His 
Spirit, are not pleasant to God : forasmuch as they 
* Rom. xiv. 23. + Heb. xi. 6. 



184 A Good Man, 



spring not of faith in Jesus Christ : yea rather, for that 
they are not done as God hath willed and com- 
manded them to be done, we doubt not but they 
have the nature of sin." * The Confession of 
Faith is even more explicit. " Works done by un- 
regenerate men, although, for the matter of them, 
they may be things which God commands, and of 
good use both to themselves and others : yet, be- 
cause they proceed not from an heart purified 
by faith; nor are done in a right manner, accord- 
ing to the Word; nor to a right end, the glory of 
God ; they are therefore sinful, and cannot please 
God." f Now, these statements have an austere 
sound : but they are not in any way unreasonable. 
It is in thorough consistence with the teaching 
both of reason and conscience that a deed which for 
its own substance is a good deed, may be done for 
such a motive, as that it shall not stamp the doer of 
it as a good man. To give alms to the needful and 
deserving, is a good thing in itself : but if the alms be 
given to be seen and obtain glory of men, the giving 
of the alms is a mere piece of self-seeking and self- 
conceit : and the giver is not a charitable person, but 
a vain and selfish person. And there is nothing un- 
reasonable in saying, that faith in Christ, and devo- 
tion towards Him, and the earnest desire to do all as 
the work He gives to do, — make the great principle 
which ought to move the Christian in everything he 
* Thirty -nine Articles ; Article XIII. f Chap. xvi. 



A Good Man. 185 



does : and that just in so far as any doing of a Chris- 
tian man, even that which in itself is kindest and 
most beneficent, is not mainly inspired by that prin- 
ciple, just in that degree it lacks somewhat of being 
all that it ought to be : it fails of its possible perfec- 
tion. It is well that when you can help a fellow- 
creature in distress, you do : it is so far well if you do 
it at the mere impulse of a kind heart : it would have 
been perfectly well in those who do not know what we 
know, to have done it under that impulse. But then, 
w r e who have heard of Christ : we who know what He 
did for us, and who know what we owe to Him, — 
everything in providence as well as everything in 
grace, — surely we fail of true gratitude towards Him 
and due remembrance of Him, if we do this without 
any thought of Him through Whom alone we are 
able to do it! And just in so far as we fail of the 
feeling which would be right in us, in that degree we 
do wrong. The sin of such a deed, done by an un- 
believer now, who might have been a believer had he 
chosen, is one of those sins in which we come short 
He did well, so far : but there was something more 
wanted. He ought to have gone further. There 
was something lacking : and to lack what is right, is 
wrong. And this is all that these stern-sounding 
articles say. Who can gainsay it? It is plainly 
reasonable ; plainly true. 

The second of the three texts to which I desire 



1 86 A Good Mail. 



your attention, is not contained in the New Testa, 
ment, but in one of the Psalms. But doubtless you 
will accept it as of authority. In the Ninth Psalm * 
there stands this solemn declaration, "The wicked 
shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that 
forget God." Now the great truth conveyed in 
the memorable text, is the identity of wickedness with 
ungodliness. To forget God, is, according to the 
standard of Holy Scripture, the same thing as to be 
wicked. To make this plain to such as are not 
Hebrew scholars, a word must be said. This Psalm 
is a piece of Hebrew poetry. Now, you know, the 
way in which we distinguish English poetry from 
prose, is by the poetry being divided into lines or 
verses, while the prose is not. But the way in which 
Hebrew poetry is known is this, speaking generally. 
In the first clause of a verse we find something said, 
— some truth expressed perhaps : and then in the 
second clause the same truth is repeated, or explained, 
or enforced. You will remember that verse in Isaiah, 
" Seek ye the Lord while He may be found :" there 
is the first line of the verse. Then in the second we 
have just the same thing repeated, with a little varia- 
tion : " Call ye upon Him while He is near." That 
is an example of a verse of Hebrew poetry. Now, to 
go back to the verse of the Psalm. You read first, 
" The wicked shall be turned into hell : " there is the 
first line. Then comes the second line : " Even all 



A Good Man. 187 



the nations that forget God." Now that second line 
is a repetition of what was said in the first. The 
people described in the first line as "the wicked," 
are the same people that are described in the second 
line, as " the nations that forget God." So, in the 
estimation of the inspired writer of the Psalm, " To 
forget God " is to be " wicked." Now let us consider 
this, we that are so ready to forget God. And let us 
mark here a second point of difference between God's 
good man, and the world's good man. When people, 
judging by a mere worldly standard, talk about any 
person and say he is a good man, they never think at 
all about whether he is remembering and serving and 
glorifying God, or not. When people, judging by a 
worldly standard, say that anything a person has done 
is a good deed, they never think at all about whether 
it was done in any degree from grateful love to God, 
and to the end of His glory, or not. If a man does 
a kind thing, or if a man lives a creditable honest life, 
they would say he was a good man, although there be 
lacking in his heart one trace of remembrance of God, 
or regard to His will and glory : although he never 
thinks of God from morning till night, any more than 
a poor inferior animal that knows nothing about God. 
You might walk through this life a practical atheist : 
" without God in the world : " and yet you might be 
so correct in your engagements, so true to your word, 
so pleasant in your address, so benevolent and kind 
in your conduct, as that all men should speak well of 



1 83 A Good Man. 



you : as that you should pass for a remarkably good 
man. Yet all the while, you would be, tried by God's 
judgment, no better than one of those " wicked," who 
forget God. Not but what all that is honest, pure, 
and kind in your heart and life, is good so far as it 
goes : but then, believing what you believe about 
God and your obligation and duty to Him, it is not 
good in you. There is a fatal imperfection : You 
have fallen short. There is a vital thing lacking : 
and for lack of that, your goodness does not reach up 
to the standard of Revelation. And that is the 
standard which is required of you, who know God's 
revealed will : We say nothing as to those who knew, 
or know, it not. 

And now we come to the third characteristic 
of the good man under this Christian light which 
shines on us. It is suggested by what is said 
of Barnabas in the verse in which my text stands : 
" For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost 
and of faith." Faith we have already seen to be 
needful : Here is something not yet spoken of. The 
good man is one who is "full of the Holy Ghost." 
He is one regenerated and sanctified by the Blessed 
Spirit of God. He is " a new creature " in Christ : 
he is being "renewed in the whole man after the 
image of God," and is daily "dying unto sin and 
living unto righteousness." There is nothing truly 
and sufficiently good in any human being, but what 



A Good Man, 189 



the Spirit of God has inspired. Our natural bent is 
to evil rather than good. When we are evil, it is ail 
too much in accordance with our make. When we 
are good, " By the grace of God we are what we are.*' 
Some have regarded this as a hard and severe say- 
ing : not to add a manifestly unreasonable one. It 
seems to me anything but that. It does not ask us 
to deny or to abate by a jot anything good and merci- 
ful and heroic that ever has been in this world : It 
only tells us, what some never knew and some forget, 
what is the blessed Source of it all. Most of the 
things which have been brought as proofs that this 
Christian doctrine is not true, have no bearing on the 
question, one way or other. I know, of course, how 
you may point to the countless instances of man's 
heroic self-forgetting goodness and courage, and of 
woman's gentle and patient care and love, very little 
lower than the angels : and you may ask whether 
there have not been good deeds and good hearts in 
humanity, wherein Divine grace had no part; but to 
which something within us, not to be gainsaid or 
resisted, sets its seal as good, in the swelling heart at 
the mention of them, and the unrestrainable tear! 
Brethren, I welcome all these ! I admit them heartily; 
and wish there were more to admit. And I say that 
in them all, there worked the grace of the Blessed 
Spirit of God. It is the teaching of the Church, and 
of the Bible; men's " ability to do good works is not 
at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of 



190 A Good Man. 



Christ." * " It is God Which worketh in you both to 
will and to do of His good pleasure." And while 
God's Word says so, reason has nothing to say against 
it. When the gush of kindness comes in the heart at 
the sight of suffering, prompting to the kind deed, 
that is the impulse of the Holy Spirit. How can you 
say No? You say it is the impulse of your own 
heart. You know no better. The Blessed Spirit's 
working weaves in with the natural working of mind 
and heart : you cannot say where the one ends and 
the other begins. Is that hard ? Is that discourag- 
ing? To believe that the Holy Spirit is working in 
everything good that is done or thought or felt over 
this wide world : to believe that He is graciously 
working in those who never know whence comes the 
kindly impulse to the good deed, nor the new light 
cast on some perplexity to prompt the right and 
charitable thought! Surely the wisest and best of 
heathens would have been thoroughly at one with St 
Paul here : would have confessed that if they were 
enabled to do anything truly good, it was by a help 
from above : by a grace above nature ; whence, they 
did not know, for they never had been told. It is 
kindly and encouraging, to hope and believe, that 
before Pentecost, before any revelation of Him, there 
was a secret Power at work over all the world : tending 
always to good, and never to evil ; and that therein 

* Confession of Faith, Chap, xvi. Thirty-nine Artictes ; 
Article X. 



A Good Man. 



191 



worked the Blessed Spirit of God ! We do not ask 
you to throw aside alien good, and to deny it : we 
only ask you to remember Whence it comes ! 

Thus we have sought to discern the special 
characteristics of the Good Man, now in these days 
of Gospel light. Doubtless, now, the true Chris- 
tian is the good man. Faith in Christ : Godliness of 
heart : and the whole nature sanctified by the Holy 
Ghost : these make the Christianly good man. These 
make meet for duty and trial here : for rest hereafter. 
And what can we say more, than to ask that it may 
please God to work in each of us all these things, by 
the grace of His Blessed Spirit I 



XIII. 



THE GREAT CHANGE. 

" For I know that Thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house 
appointed for all living." — Job xxx. 23. 

THERE is a famous picture, by a great painter, 
which represents a* scene which so touched 
one of the most charming essayists in our language, 
that time, after time in his writings he recurs to the 
scene, and to the reflections it might be supposed to 
suggest. The picture represents a company of rustics, 
who lived long ago in the simple Arcadian country 
and age, coming on a sunshiny holiday upon an 
unknown grave, in a lonely place, marked by a 
sculptured stone. It bore no name, and no date : 
and all the inscription on it was this : " I once lived 
in Arcadia too." * 

Of course there was something there that appealed 
to sympathy. And the painter has shown his skill in 
depicting, so far as face and gesture could depict, the 
feelings with which those who read the words recog- 
nised the silent claim of kindred on the part of him 

* Et in Arcadia ego. The picture is by Poussin ; the essayist 
is Hazlitt. 



The Great Change. 



193 



who slept below. They could readily imagine wha* 
his life had been, whose life had been just such as 
theirs. He had looked on the same scenes : known 
the like pleasures and pains. What they were, he had 
been. What he was, they would be. 

It is with something of the like sympathy and in- 
terest that we read the words of this text. This book 
of Job is the oldest book in the world : and it tells 
us the history of one of the early fathers of mankind. 
Thousands of years have passed since Job died : but 
here we see him looking on to the future for the day 
of his dying : and there is something strange in find- 
ing that spoken of as something to come ; which has 
been past for all these ages. Then the world has 
seen many changes since the patient patriarch died : 
Men may be supposed to be wiser, if they be not 
happier : We know a thousand things which Job did 
not : We speak a language which was not formed till 
centuries after he was in his grave. Yet this simple 
sentence wakens in us a sympathy that bridges over 
all difference between us and him. We feel that for 
all the primeval days in which he lived, and all the 
mighty changes which influences that have worked 
since then have made upon the human race, he too 
was our brother. And all the distance between Job 
and ourselves seems lost in a great equality, when we 
take for our own his ancient words, and say " I know 
that Thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house 
appointed for all living ! " 

N 



*94 



The Great Change. 



You see the subject to which I now ask your atten- 
tion, only for a very little time. I have never before 
made it the matter of an entire discourse. No doubt, 
the subject is one on which an infinity has been said 
and written by innumerable human beings, from the 
author of Job downwards : yet though it might well 
be vulgarised by having been, for many a day, the 
stock resort of every incompetent person w T ho by 
cheap means has aimed at the pathetic ; still the 
theme is one which never can grow old. And the 
experience and the heart of most men convert into 
touching eloquence even the poorest formula of set 
phrases about the tremendous Fact. Yet who that 
would worthily seek to address his fellow-creatures on 
this subject, but must know that words are perfectly 
vain here, to express what he would say, w T hat all 
have thought and felt? Then, though the subject be 
old, the thing is everlastingly new. The death which 
has passed on others is over and gone : that which is 
waiting for us is a new thing yet to be. Death is eld 
as the flowers are old ; because fresh as they spring 
now, they sprang a thousand years since. It is old 
as the morning is old, because fresh as it dawns now, 
it dawned on the eyes of men before the Deluge. 
But each flower that springs is a new thing, fresh 
from the hand of God : each morning that dawns is 
a new thing, though there have been thousands and 
thousands like it. And so, death is new. It will not 
matter at all to each of us, when it is our turn to die, 



The Great Change. 195 



that millions and millions have died before us : Each 
of them died for himself, and you must die for your- 
self: and doubtless, when death comes, it will be 
something the like of which you never felt before. It 
is strange, indeed, that this thing, this death, whose 
name is so ready on our lips, whose name we have 
joined with the names of so many friends and neigh- 
bours, looks such a new thing when we feel it coming 
on ourselves, or see it sapping the life of one who is 
dear to us ! 

" I know" says Job, " that Thou wilt bring me to 
death." It is not I think, I daresay, I reckon on it. 
There is entire certainty: "I know." And whence 
came the certainty? How did Job know? 

He knew, for one thing, from what he had seen in 
the case of his fellow-men around him. People died 
in the land of Uz, just as they die here. We do not 
well know in what hope or belief of a better life and 
a better world they laid themselves down to pass away 
from this world and this life : we cannot well imagine 
how either dying or living were able to face death 
when they knew nothing beyond it : but any way, 
they died. There were no Christian churches then, 
beneath whose sacred shade rich and poor might 
sleep the long sleep together: though now, after 
Christ has brought immortality to life, it is with the 
words of Job that the minister of religion meets the 
dead at the churchyard gate in a sister-country; as I 



ig6 



The Great Change, 



heartily wish he did too in our own : but then there 
were desolate places where kings and counsellors lay- 
still and were quiet, where the wicked ceased from 
troubling and the weary were at rest. And what we 
have seen death do, Job had also seen : his own 
beautiful words tell us he knew that death could take 
the infant at the threshold of life, as well as the great, 
the wise, and the aged. And all this was not the 
doing of a day, or a year, or a century. It had been 
the way of the world since the world began. Death 
appeared almost before the days in Eden had time to 
grow indistinct in the remembrance of Adam : and no 
man, save one, had escaped it since. It was no hasty 
conclusion that the great tide which had swept away 
all past generations should sweep away that which was 
living then : and Job might well say, " I know" 

But he had other reasons for knowing, of more 
personal concern. The sufferings he himself was 
enduring pointed onward, with no uncertain hand, 
to the day of his dissolution. What were these, but 
the forerunners of something that would " change the 
countenance " more than the sprinkled ashes : What 
were these but the shading-off (as it were) between 
vigorous health with its cheerful strength and alacrity; 
and death with its imperturbable repose? The 
separation of soul and body does not, for the most 
part, gently steal upon man, a quiet sleep from which 
there is no waking in this world ; but which gradually 
and painlessly takes away strength and consciousness 



The Great Change. 197 



from heart and limbs. Neither does death commonly 
come with a sudden shock, — one sharp pang and over : 
not perceived the moment before it comes, as it never 
can be the moment after. Dissolution is, in most 
cases, only the conclusion of a dreary series of un- 
rest and suffering, which by degrees wears the sufferer 
down to the house, to his bed, to his grave. And 
Job knew that those great sufferings which had 
already laid him low in the dust, would only be 
finishing the work they had begun when they had 
mingled his mortal frame with it. 

Well, we have Job's reasons for knowing, as con- 
cerns ourselves, what he knew. There are many 
things of which we are in ignorance : many of which 
we are in doubt : but we know that God will bring us 
to death, and to the house appointed for all living. 
Some good Christian people have indeed thought 
that the end of this world is perhaps so near, that 
many now living may not have to pass to another 
life through the gate of death : but I cannot say less 
than that if the end of this world be near, it is not 
because there is not room for it to go on improving, 
morally and spiritually, for many a day and year : and 
as for those who are not to die, there awaits them a 
not less solemn change. We know, as Job knew, by 
unvaried experience : by indications in ourselves : and 
we know by many references and declarations in 
God's Word. Generation upon generation has arisen 
since my text was first written : but each has followed 



198 The Great Change. 



that which preceded it, to the place where all have 
gone and all must go. Every city of the living has 
its quieter city of the dead : every village and hamlet 
must have its green spot with the quiet graves. And 
how very many, of all we have ever known and cared 
for, are gone ! It startles us, sometimes, to think that 
we are the survivors of so many who started with us 
in the race of life. We too, like Job, know the 
meaning of pain : not merely what the thing is, but 
what it points on to. And many little indications in 
ourselves begin early to suggest the approaches of 
that which must prevail at last. The first gray hairs 
are as a slight but sure premonition. Lessening 
activity and energy of body and mind begin to tell 
their story, soon after middle life is reached. A 
veariness grows upon us, which must end in the last 
long sleep. Yes, we are quite sure what is coming : 
Like Job, we know. 

" I know," said Job, "that Thou wilt bring me to 
death." You see, the patriarch refers his coming end 
to the working of Almighty God. Not the wasting 
and painful disease that was preying on his body: not 
the deep anguish that was weighing down his heart : 
not the loss of his wealth : not the death of his 
children : none of these was the thing that would 
bring him to the grave. They might be instruments : 
but they were instruments in a Higher Hand. Job 
rises above the second causes : and goes direct to 



The Great Change. 



199 



Him in whose Hand these are. Thou wilt bring me 
to death : Thou, and none save Thee : Till the time 
Thou hast set, a warring world could not extinguish 
this little spark of life : and when Thy day has come, 
there is nothing in nature so little but it may send me 
from this world ! Let us do as Job did. It is God 
that will bring us to death in our appointed season : 
it was God that took away from us those whom we 
have lost. We take all things best from His Hand : 
wisdom and love direct all that He does : we can trust 
Him for that, even when we cannot see that it is so. 
Now, I do not say this to counsel that kind of resig- 
nation which comes of fatalism : God appoints the 
hour of our death just exactly as He appoints the 
time and manner of every other event in the history 
of each of us : He appoints it (that is) so that we 
remain under the solemn obligation to use the means 
within our reach to lengthen life and prevent death : 
and it will not do that wicked laziness and impro- 
vidence should justify that disobedience to God's 
natural laws, the laws of health and life, which costs 
every year so many lives, on the ground that God 
appoints life and death. God permits sinful and 
foolish human beings to do many things He does 
not approve, and for which He punishes and will 
punish them. And we are just as solemnly bound 
to obey the laws of health, as to obey any other of 
God's laws. If infant life, and youthful life, are 
sacrificed shamefully in our cities, through lack of 



200 



The Great Change. 



pure air and water and drainage, that is not God's 
doing, any more than any other grievous sin is God's 
doing. He has made His mind as to these things 
perfectly plain, by a revelation for which the Bible 
was not needed : He has revealed His will to us 
through our own faculties, and our own power of 
observation. And by these He has made His com- 
mand, Thou shalt breathe pure air, as plain, and as 
binding, as Thou shalt not steal, or Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God. But what I mean is, that when we 
have diligently used all means, all skill, for the preser- 
vation of some precious life, and yet all is vain : or 
when some awful inevitable accident has befallen 
(and though there are very few inevitable accidents, 
such things do come) ; then it is good for us to 
remember Who ordered all this, and so to learn 
the psalmist's great lesson of resignation; "I was 
dumb, I opened not my mouth ; because Thou 
didst it ! " 

" I know," said Job, " that Thou wilt bring me to 
death." You see, it is not " Thou wilt bring all men 
to death," " Thou will bring the human race to 
death." No, Job singles himself out from all the 
crowd of mankind ; it is, " Thou wilt bring mc" 
Now, there is no subject in regard to which there is 
so singularly anomalous and inconsistent a way of 
thinking and feeling, as there is about our great 
change. Not that I accept without reservation that 



The Great Change. 



201 



line of a saturnine writer of verses, who might pro- 
bably affect us more by his solemn reflections if we 
had the least reason to believe that he felt them him- 
self, — the line which says, u All men think all men 
mortal, but themselves." There are many hours in 
which that is not true. And yet there are hours in 
which men speak of the mortality of the race, just as 
they speak of the depravity of the race; silently, 
half-con sciously, making a reservation in their own 
favour. But Job looked death in the face : he speaks 
of it as coming specially to himself : he only inci- 
dently alludes to the fate of all living. Let us do like 
him. I do not mean that any good would follow 
from that never-ceasing anticipation of our own de- 
parture in which good men have tried to live, and 
tried with not much success ; God's plain purpose 
being that there should be long and busy seasons in 
our life in which the thought of death is no more 
than latently present with us ; but I think that now 
and then, lying on our bed at night, walking alone 
on a summer evening, sitting quietly in God's house, 
it would be good to seek to realise what is meant 
by death to ourselves. The thing is coming : It is 
surely right sometimes to look at it. We cannot be 
sure how it will come ; but there are strong likeli- 
hoods. Think of the sick-chamber with its shaded 
light : of the thorny bed of pain : of the weary toss- 
ings by day and night : of the long seasons of watch- 
ing in those midnight hours when all the world is still. 



202 



The Great Change. 



Think of the change, so absolute and complete, the 
change that makes all things new, from your former 
way of life to this reality of illness, that makes the 
very hours look strange. Think of hope struggling 
with despair : your heart sometimes bounding back to 
the world, too congenial to us all, — and sometimes 
reconciling itself to the last solemn change. Think at 
length of the message that all hope is past, that man 
can do no more for you, — that message which always 
startles however long you expected it : then the utter 
forgetting of very many things you once cared much 
for, and the strange crowding on the mind of old for- 
gotten thoughts and words. Think of the last fare- 
well : of the sinking heart burdened perhaps with 
many cares for those you leave behind you : and then 
you can speak no more, and see the faces around no 
more : and you feel how truly men must die alone. 
For though kind friends have come along with you 
every stage of your life, and kept you kind company, 
they must leave you now, and you go on by yourself, 
a separate soul alone in your own awful personality. 
Now all this will be to each of you. Into the pre- 
sence of God ; into the other world, launching away all 
alone, each of us must go. The little child, whom 
its mother would hardly leave a minute out of her 
presence, must waken up on that distant shore alone 
for the first time in its little life, with no kind mother 
near. The soul passes away from human sight and 
knowledge : but you may think of the sick-chamber, 



The Great Change. 



203 



a little since filled with mourning friends, a little since 
the place of your last words and last breath, now 
silent and deserted. A rigid figure lies on that bed : 
it is you. Those who loved you best shrink as they 
touch it : for there is something fearful in the body 
without, the soul. In a little they bear it to the last 
resting-place, and leave it there alone. The night 
comes down, and you are there by yourself; dead 
among dead generations. Day dawns, and the busy 
world goes on without you : no smile is gone from 
nature's face; and the place that knew you best 
never grieves for your absence. Months pass on : 
and the wounded hearts that mourned for you are 
healed : you are little missed, save by one or two. 
Years are past, and your friends have followed you : 
your name and theirs are gone and forgot. Now, 
that is what death, so far as sense can see it, has 
been to innumerable millions : Let each of us here 
present think, Now, that is death to me. 

We bless God, through Jesus Christ, the Resurrec- 
tion and the Life ; that this is not all. But let us 
finish Job's words first. 

" Bring me to death, and to the house appointed 
for all living. " There needs no oracle to tell us what 
house is that : There is but one, narrow and lowly, 
where all men meet. In the dust whence all were 
taken at the first, all meet again. This is the quiet 
home for which the monarch exchanges his palace, 
the poor savage his leaf-covered shed, the far-away 



204 The Great Change. 



settler his log-hut, the beggar his sorry shelter. It is 
an old house ; the oldest house of all. It was before 
the tower of Babel : the long years of the Pyramids 
dwindle before its vaster age : the proudest piles ever 
reared must decay before it can. It is a solemn 
house: always a solemn house to all who feel 
rightly. Whether the daisies grow over, and the 
green grass : or the dim vault of the ancient church 
shelter it from the sunshine and the dew. Whether 
the freshly-turned earth tell the tenant went to it but 
yesterday ; or the sunken stone and level turf speak 
of many a year. It is an expectant house. For all 
the generations it has received, there is room yet : 
room for all who can come. It is "appointed for all 
living." Solemn thought, that every human being 
who now walks this world, has some place that is 
even now waiting for him : some place where it is 
decreed he shall sleep till the Resurrection. Where 
that place is, not many can certainly tell. W T e may 
be passing it in our daily walks : we may know it 
familiarly. Or, it may be in some strange and dis- 
tant region, where our native tongue is seldom 
spoken, and whose name we have hardly heard. But, 
be it near or far away : be it amid the ashes of our 
kindren, or where none of our race ever lived or died : 
be it near to the house where we were born, or be it 
where no friendly step will ever come to it ; there is 
a place that is expecting each of us : a place ap- 
pointed for us : a place that will not be complete till 



The Great Change. 205 

we are there ! O clods of the valley, waiting till we 
come to you, ye cannot have long to wait. There 
are days of life coming perhaps : something to suffer, 
something to enjoy : friends to make, cares to dis- 
tract,* work to do. But how little, how passing, all 
these things seem : when I remember that even now 
my grave is " appointed," and my last home waiting 
for me ! 

And now, " If a man die, shall he live again ? " 
That is the great question. The great question when 
Job put it. The great question yet. 

It is a question which once, and for many a day 
and year, would have been very hard to answer. It 
is a question very hard to answer yet, if we had to 
judge by what we see. Rather, perhaps, very easily 
answered : but the answer would be No. For, at 
death, the soul seems to go out, like the extinguished 
flame. As for the old familiar body, by which your 
friends knew you, the change is sadder still ; and 
there is deep humiliation about it. Oh, " sown in 
corruption : sown in dishonour : sown in weakness : " 
how true the inspired words ! But the end is the 
quiet dust : a Dust we are, and to dust we return." 
And then, the only farther characteristic of death, as 
sense shows it is to us, is utter Hopelessness. The 
soul is gone ; the body is dust : There is no appear- 
ance of any change. No one comes back from the 
undiscovered country : Can there be an undiscovered 



2o6 The Great Change. 



country at all ? And there is not a trace, as yet, of 
any resurrection of the body. If there never were to 
be any, things could not look more like it than they 
do. Christian generation after generation has been 
laid down to rest in our grand burying-place, within the 
hearing of the sea : the green turf has risen, through 
the accumulation of human dust : and there it all 
remains • it has never stirred : Why should it ever ? 
O how awful, how hopeless a thing death is, when you 
know nothing more of it than sense can show ! Aye, 
or reason find out; for it finds out nothing at all. I 
do not value at a pin's fee the light of nature (as it is 
called) on this matter. I never heard any argument 
from that for immortality which could not be easily 
answered : I have heard some that spoke to the 
heart, eager to believe ; never one that could convince 
the head. And for resurrection, there is no natural 
argument at all. I have indeed stood beside a grave, 
where was inscribed a verse, familiar to many of you, 
that begins, " Shall I be left forgotten in the dust, 
While fate relenting lets the flowers revive ? " I want 
something firmer to rest upon than the analogy, even 
if the fact were stated truly. But it is not stated 
truly. The flowers do not revive. Other flowers, 
like them, come : but the old flowers that died do 
not come back. As argument, that is not worth a 
feather. 

We thank God, through Jesus Christ, that He did 
not leave us to find out for ourselves whether i( if a 



The Great Change. 207 



man die, he shall live again." He has told us : and 
now we know. " Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, hath 
abolished death, and hath brought life and immor- 
tality to light through the gospel/' He has abolished 
the old death : the name does not mean the same 
thing now. " Blessed are the dead that die in the 
Lord." The redeemed soul, in the moment of death, 
passes into perfect rest and holiness and happiness in 
the Saviour's presence : and as for the poor body, " we 
know Him, and the power of His resurrection/' " This 
corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal 
must put on immortality ! " And " So, when this 
corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this 
mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be 
brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is 
swallowed up in victory." 

See how my text, dreary and hopeless if we knew 
no more than it says, changes, when we read it by the 
blessed light of the glorious gospel ! We dare hardly 
speak of these things, save in God's own comfortable 
words : so sure, so rich, so many ! 

"I know that Thou wilt bring me to death/' But 
" To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." 

"I know that Thou wilt bring me to death/' 
"Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. 
Martha saith unto Him, I know that he shall rise 
again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said 
unto her, I am the resurrection and the life : he that 
believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he 



2o8 The Great Change. 



live : and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me, shall 
never die ! " 

" I know that Thou wilt bring me to death," said 
Job. But he said words too, whose meaning we know 
perhaps better than he did. 

" I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He 
shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And 
though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in 
my flesh shall I see God." 

" I know that Thou wilt bring me to death." But 
death will be nothing to fear, if we are washed in 
Christ's blood, and sanctified by His Spirit. Where- 
fore this day we earnestly ask anew r , — ask anew though 
we have asked thousands of times before, — that it may 
be so with every one of us ! 



XIV. 



THE GLORY OF THE CROSS. 



" But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of 
our Lord Jesus Christ." — Gal. vi. 14. 

INHERE are words which call up before the mind 



-L a vague conception of something grand and 
magnificent, not very exactly defined. Foremost 
among such words is that which catches the eye first 
when you look at the text. Glory: a vague thing 
indeed ; and intangible : yet somehow clad in lights, 
and invested with associations, that quicken the 
bounding pulse of youth, and stir even the calmer 
heart of mature years. The desire of eminence, of 
reputation, of that which in some humble degree may 
stand under the generic name of glory, is a thing that 
is felt, in some measure, by almost every one who has 
risen above the pressure of the bare physical wants. 
And doubtless, thinking of the grand abstraction 
itself, — since the world was young, through all its 
long ages, and over all its immeasurable extents, here 
is the thing which, above all others, has been schemed 
for, laboured for, lived for, and died for. We turn 








2 to The Glory of the Cross. 

away, from the thought of glory sought on battlefields 
and in senates, to think, with a deeper interest, how 
one, not to be forgot but with our language,* took 
" labour and intent study for his portion in this life/ 3 
that so the delights he had scorned, and the laborious 
days he had lived, might leave their memorial to 
after times, in " something so written as they should 
not willingly let it die. 33 And I suppose there is 
a season in the life of many, in which it seems a 
grand thing ; an end worth much toil and anxiety \ to 
rise conspicuous above one's fellow-creatures : to have 
your name one that shall fire ambitious spirits : to be 
pointed to as a noble instance of what the energy and 
perseverance of man can do : to be known by your 
fame to numbers who otherwise never saw nor knew 
you, and whom you will never see nor know : and 
while hundreds of thousands die almost without notice 
extending further than their immediate kin, that your 
removal from the world should seem a great event. 
That season, of course, goes soon : and "glory's thrill 
is over," unless in the case of very exceptionally 
enthusiastic folk : but a time may be recalled in which 
with real sympathy one could recall the poetic senti- 
ment, that " To live in hearts we leave behind, Is not 
to die ! " 

It is no part of the purpose of this discourse, to 
dwell on the vanity of worldly glory : and a less prac- 
tical end could hardly be contemplated by any 
* Milton. 



The Glory of the Cross. 211 

preacher. I have spoken of worldly glory for the 
sake of contrast with that mentioned in the text. We 
have here the words of a man who, quite apart from 
inspiration, was one of the greatest men that ever 
lived. Think of his fiery energy : think of his daunt- 
less courage : think of the actual work he did. At 
the feet of Gamaliel he had acquired the best learning 
of his nation : By the strictness of his life he had sur- 
passed the straitest among the Pharisees : The East 
was studded with the churches he had planted : The 
languages of all tribes and peoples came ready to his 
lips : and in the body or out of the body he had been 
caught up into the third heaven. The words he wrote 
were to be read in the hearing of men from the 
Ganges to the Mississippi ; and were to form essen- 
tial part of the laws of a kingdom that should see all 
other kingdoms out. Now, what is the actual fame 
of the greatest hero, or the most illustrious author, to 
that of the Apostle Paul ? How widely known is his 
name : How conspicuous is he among, and above, 
his fellow-creatures : How often is he in the thoughts, 
and the discourse, of men : How true it is that not to 
be well acquainted with all the particulars of his life 
and history, would be taken as proof of the most 
deplorable ignorance: How every thing he did, and 
every event that befell him, has furnished matter of 
curiosity, of investigation, of discussion: What ascend- 
ancy and influence he has exerted over society, and 
the views and feelings of society, from his day to ours : 



2 1 2 The Glory of the Cross. 

How every word he wrote has been scanned and 
sifted, as if men were sure it must contain something 
that would repay the toil ! Show us the philosopher 
whose words of wisdom have sunk so deep, and been 
remembered so well : Show us one man who can say 
he is seeking to practise in his daily life the precepts 
and advices of Plato, for every thousand that are 
praying to live mindful of the words of St Paul : Show 
us the beloved friend whose letters have been read 
and re-read by those dearest to him, half so often and 
half so earnestly as St Paul's have been by multitudes 
beyond number. From his tent-maker's shed ; from 
his Roman prison ; from his unknown grave ; he 
exercises a sway over the minds of men, the best 
minds of the race, to which the empire of Alexander 
w r as narrow indeed. Not a day shines on the world, 
but his name is in the thoughts, and his words on the 
lips of millions. Yet so lightly did he hold such 
renown as this, that he seems to have thought it wrong 
to waste one care upon it : and duty and inclination 
speak together in the memorable text, " God forbid 
that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord 
Jesus Christ ! " 

The meaning of this plainly is, that in the ordinary 
sense of the word, St Paul would not glory at all. 
The feeling he expresses, when he speaks of glorying 
in the cross, is something widely different from that 
self-idolisation which is at the root of the quest and 
the enjoyment of earthly glory. It was indeed a 



The Glory of the Cross. 2 1 3 

feeling as warm and stirring as any which man could 
know, not centring in self, and self-aggrandisement, 
but in the Person, the Work, the Religion of his Lord. 

Now St Paul, though enthusiastic, was not what we 
understand by an enthusiast. His was not one of 
those w T eak minds that may be carried away by a 
sudden fervour, to make some strong declaration for 
which there is little ground, and the extravagance of 
which they themselves would the next hour be ready 
to acknowledge. We may be sure these words express 
no crude and hasty sentiment : but that what St Paul 
felt on the long-departed day when he wrote this verse, 
he felt the next day, and the next again, and every 
day of his life. And what we know of him assures as 
yet farther, that there must be good reason for his 
esteeming the cross a thing so glorious, that in com- 
parison with it other things had no glory at all. Now. 
taking the cross to mean, w 7 hat here of course it does 
mean, the entire great work of redemption and salva- 
tion done by Christ's life and specially by His suffer- 
ing and death : we shall doubtless find the reason why 
St Paul held this estimate of it, when we consider two 
things about it : first, What it is : and next, What it 
can do. 

As for what it is, we know that Christ crucified is 
" the power of God and the wisdom of God : " the 
gospel scheme of salvation is God's especial and 
chiefest work. It is, beyond question, the great 
theme of all His revelation to man : All other matters 



214 The Glory of the Cross. 

hold a subordinate place there. And does it seem to 
any as though in saying this, God's other works are 
disparaged and slighted? Does it seem as if this 
earth, in its vast spreadings of land and sea, carried 
back our thoughts to a work, testifying not less 
weightily to the mighty strength and delicate skill of 
the great Creator? Does it seem as if the heavings 
up of huge mountains, Alp or Himmaleh ; and the 
waste of ocean, weltering and toiling away to the 
horizon • could tell you of a work as great ? Or does 
it seem as if there rose before us the thought of a task, 
mighty as omnipotence itself could do, when we think 
how vast His power, how unimaginable the diversity 
of His attention, without Whose direct agency not a 
flower blooms in the desert, not a ripple sweeps the 
surface of the unexplored sea, — when we think of that 
providential care which can divide itself so infinitely, 
as to tend every heart that beats, every leaf that opens, 
every sparrow that falls ; taking note not more of the 
grand politics of empires, than of the affairs of every 
village, and the household concerns of every dwelling ? 
Well, mighty works though Creation and Providence 
be, Redemption is a mightier ! A word sufficed to 
call a world into being : and the care of nature costs 
Omnipotence and Omniscience neither fatigue nor 
perplexity : but to redeem our sinful race cost the 
Incarnation, Suffering, and Death of the Son of God. 
We come, speaking of these things, to mysteries of 
the faith : but there is no more vital Christian verity 



The Glory of the Cross. 2 1 5 

than this, — that to work out our salvation, it was 
needful that the Divine Creator should dwell for 
years, in the likeness of sinful man, in the midst of a 
sinful world : that His blessed feet should wander 
wearily over one little province of His own great 
kingdom : that He should endure agony that cannot 
be reckoned; and die a death of unutterable woe. 
Now, unless God shows the uttermost disregard to the 
greatness of the end when He appoints the means, 
how immeasurably greater a thing than Creation or 
Providence must the work of Redemption be ! 

Yes, many things are God's work. " Our Father 
worketh hitherto" is the strain that is told by all 
things. It is not a mere fancy that the stars as they 
shine are for ever proclaiming the Divinity of the 
Hand that made them. It is something more than a 
poetic thought, that in the thunder of the mountains 
and the roar of the waves you may hear something of 
the great Creator. It is not an imagination, but a 
substantial truth, that there is one thing concerning 
which the wide universe is always speaking to the 
docile ear : that every leaf as it grows, and every 
stream as it murmurs, every hill with its green slopes 
in summer, and all the face of the earth renewed in 
spring, has something to tell us of the wisdom that 
planned them, and the strength that, made and up- 
holds them all. Hints of amazing wisdom and power 
lie scattered over the length and breadth of creation : 
but it is in the plan of redemption, in the cross of 



216 The Glory of the Cross. 

Christ, that we see all God's attributes mirrored and 
harmonised : His forgiving love beside His perfect 
justice : His tender sympathy shown in Christ's heart 
and life : His true desire that all should be saved, 
that sin and sorrow should cease : His unfailing pur- 
pose that this shall be in the end : and the precious 
revelation, beyond that of a Blessed Redeemer, of a 
mighty Sanctifier and Comforter : a Helper through 
the manifold provocations and temptations of these 
weak hearts and this ensnaring life, — a Sustainer 
under all cares, troubles, and fears : a hundred 
blessed and most needful facts and truths concerning 
which earth and sea and sky are dumb ! 

Such thoughts might have led St Paul to the resolu- 
tion expressed in the text, to glory in nothing other 
than the cross of Christ. But with yet greater force 
there comes to us the second thing we purposed to 
think of : It is what this great scheme of redemption 
can do. 

Herein lies the glory of the cross \ in the good it 
does. And this great machinery; heralded by pro- 
phetic voices, matured by the slow working of the 
Almighty age after age, wrought out finally by the 
death of Christ ; we might, before actual experience, 
have been sure that it would not abide amid sinning 
and suffering men, a great presence that would do no 
good. And what can it do ? Rather ask what it can 
not do : It can do everything. There is not a thing 



The Glory of the Cross. 2 1 7 

we truly need, that it cannot give us. There is not a 
change that ought to be produced in ourselves or 
upon this world, that it cannot effect. There is not a 
sin it cannot wash away ; not a sorrow it cannot com- 
fort j not the hard heart it cannot soften ; not the 
depraved soul it cannot renew. In a word, the cross 
can give us all we want, and make us all we ought 
to be. 

It is but by way of remembrance that the things are 
said which I go on to say : but the old story cannot 
be repeated too often. Let us recall the main benefits 
we owe to Christ's atoning sacrifice. 

Is it true that every one of us here has times with- 
out number broken God's law? is it true that God has 
seriously said that He will awfully punish all such 
transgression ? is it true, then, that every one of us, as 
a transgressor, as a sinner against God, has a title 
which no one can dispute, to the woful inheritance of 
a place in that outer darkness, never spoken of more 
awfully than by the Kindest and most Merciful Him- 
self? If all this be true, what is the first and most 
pressing need of every man? Is it not the pardon of 
sin ? And it is plain that nothing we can do can ever 
supply this urgent need. For every sin is a thing for 
ever : it has taken its place in the realm of things 
past, and there it abides : for no human hand can 
unlock the gates of that inexorable kingdom, and 
make as though it were not that which once has been, 



2 1 8 The Glory of the Cross. 

There is but one thing in all this universe that can 
cut the link between us and our sins, our responsi- 
bilities : and that is the grand saving instrumentality 
briefly named by St Paul as the cross of Christ. 
" He bore our sins in His own body on the tree." 
He " blotted out the handwriting that was against us, 
and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross." 
And so it comes to be, as St Paul said at Antioch, 
that " through this Man is preached unto us the for- 
giveness of sins." 

But then, that we may get this forgiveness, we must 
have repentance towards God and faith in Christ. 
And we feel that by ourselves we are not able to 
repent ; are not able to believe. Here is another 
want. But this is provided for too. There is a 
Blessed Spirit Who will work in us all that which by 
ourselves we cannot do. The conditions in ourselves 
on which pardon may be obtained, are freely given us 
and wrought in us. God " grants repentance unto 
life." " Faith is the gift of God." 

So much for one gracious doing of the cross of 
Christ. " The Lamb of God takes away sin." You 
see how the soul we found with a title to perdition, 
becomes a soul with the title to heaven. But more 
is needed yet. 

Is it true that all the sins we have done are the 
outcome of a sinful nature ? is it true that so long as 
our nature remains unchanged, our conduct and life 



The Glory of the Cross. 219 

cannot grow vitally better, any more than thorns can 
bear grapes? is it true that with this nature unchanged, 
even if we were admitted to heaven, we should feel 
no pleasure in it and find its inhabitants most uncon- 
genial companions ? If all this be true, is it not plain 
that after pardon has been given, there still remains 
the great need of a holy heart and nature ? Yes : 
and the Saviour's cross supplies this need too : He 
" gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from 
all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar 
people, zealous of good works." He sends us the 
Holy Spirit, the Third Person in the Blessed Trinity, to 
renew, to sanctify. By His gracious working, we are 
" born again : " we become " a new creature : 99 thus 
getting the germ of a character on which He daily 
works, bending all things and all events to instru- 
ments and allies in the great process of sanctifica- 
tion : imperfect, sadly imperfect here ; but in the hour 
of death perfected. The title to heaven was given 
before : here is the meetness for it. 

I have wished, shortly, and in a systematic fashion 
familiar to us, to sketch the working of the great 
Atonement on a single saved soul. Diverse as is 
the experience of Christian people, yet it may con- 
fidently be said that here is an outline of the history 
of each among the great company of the redeemed. 
You know, Christian friends, whether all this be a 
little portion of sound systematic theology ; or a plain 



220 The Glory of the Cross. 

statement of most certain facts in your innermost life. 
And now, standing back, as it were, from the great 
Verity of Christ's Sacrifice, to look at it, how many 
thoughts arise in less orderly array ! We think of 
enemies reconciled to God through His Son, and 
souls afar off brought near : of a way in which we 
may boldly approach the throne of grace, making 
mention of our Redeemer's atoning death and never- 
ceasing intercession as the alone ground on which 
we hope to be heard and answered : and of death 
abolished by the life and immortality He brought to 
light, and more gloriously still, by " the power of His 
resurrection and of the feeling of sympathetic trust 
with which amid all human weakness we can now 
look up to God, made manifest in the Face of His 
incarnate and suffering Son ; and of multitudes which 
no man can number, gathered from all lands and all 
ages, who stand before the throne, and before the 
Lamb, having washed their robes and made them 
white in the blood of the crucified Saviour. We 
remember, thankfully, how now, in our darkest days, 
the cross has given us a Blessed Comforter, Who 
breathes into the heart such peace as the world can- 
not give : how now, amid all earthly losses, we may 
feel secure in the thought that our treasure is laid up 
beyond the reach of robbery or decay ; how now, 
amid all present perplexities, ignorances, and unsatis- 
fying questionings, we may anticipate, what some 
among us esteem as the very chiefest relief of a better 



The Glory of the Cross. 221 

world, the day when these shall be resolved. You 
remember that now, all because our Saviour died, the 
worst bitterness of death is past away : for now when 
for the last time in this life we hold the chilling hand 
of one dear dying, in the blank thought that we must 
part, we know the parting is but for a little time : we 
look to meet again, through God's grace, in that 
heavenly country where partings are unknown. You 
remember that now, only because our Saviour died, 
and rose the Resurrection and the Life, we are able 
to lay the Christian dead in the grave in the sure and 
certain hope of a joyful rising : we give to the heed- 
less keeping of the earth the face and the form we 
knew: knowing that they are not done with; that 
the body, still united to Christ, rests gently till the 
great resurrection. You remember that now, through 
Him crucified, there is blessed hope in the presence 
of a sorrow which, before Him, we wonder how 
human hearts could bear at all : through Him, we 
bear up, when we see, unwillingly see, that years are 
telling upon those dearest to us : It is because He 
died that we can bear, without a heart-break, to see 
the silvering hair, the tremulous hand, the tottering 
step, the enfeebled mind, that tell us so sadly that in 
a little while, if God spare us, we shall have to tread 
the path of our life alone, without that kind heart's 
love, and that revered hand's guidance. You remem- 
ber that now, only through our Redeemer, we are 
able to look onward to the Golden City, the New 



222 The Glory of the Cross. 

Jerusalem, the country which strangers and pilgrims 
on earth have sought through these long years : 
knowing little of it, but knowing that He is there : 
that there all that good will be found, that light and 
peace, that even joyousness, that holiness of heart, 
that elevation of spiritual communion, which never 
were found here. And now, when you remember 
that all these great things, so feebly presented to you, 
come of the work and sacrifice of our Redeemer, can 
you not feel within your own hearts something of that 
which burned in St Paul's when he wrote these words 
of the text ? What wonder if, reckoning up what it 
can do, he said " God forbid that I should glory, save 
in the cross of Christ ! 99 

We have thought, you see, of our Blessed Lord's 
sacrifice as working on the individual soul. There 
are larger views. We might think what it has done 
to tame, civilise, and elevate the race : to cast out 
monstrous cruelties, to develop human sympathy, to 
bring in moral light where it was blackness of dark- 
ness before. Anything that is even of worldly worth 
comes in the track of the knowledge of Christ, and 
Him crucified. " Thy kingdom come," is a prayer 
not only for all spiritual and moral good : it is a 
prayer for all political and all material ! If each of 
us • if all around us • if all the nations of the earth ■ 
were what Christianity would make them; acted out 
in their dealings with one another its teaching and 



The Glory of the Cross. 223 

spirit ; what a happy world this would be ! Surely 
the Apostle, with a prophetic eye, looked on to days, 
yet far in the distant Future, when all these things 
shall be ! Seeing their glory; their peacefulness and 
purity and kindness; evil gone, and good every- 
where : well might he, with a heart lifted up by the 
sublime prospect, cry aloud, in words our souls would 
echo, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the 
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ ! " 

I have been careful, speaking of the cross of Christ, 
to use the words in the sense in which the great 
Apostle no doubt meant them, — as meaning our 
Blessed Saviour's great sacrificial work, consummated 
on the tree. It is curious, indeed, to think how the 
actual form of the cross, which till His death had 
only associations of shame and horror, has been a 
new thing ever since He died : Not now an engine of 
shameful and torturing dismissal from this life, to be 
hidden away as something by all means to be for- 
gotten; but blazoned before all eyes by the Chris- 
tian Church as its visible Symbol, the sacred Symbol 
of its dearest hopes. The days came, indeed, in 
which a superstitious value was attached to the 
material emblem : and even as good King Hezekiah 
was constrained to break in pieces the Brazen 
Serpent because the people had come to burn 
idolatrous incense to it, so good men deemed them- 
selves bound to fight against the ancient usage which 



224 The Glory of the Cross. 

marked those baptized into Christ with the sign of 
His cross : and from the gable of parish church and 
cathedral the cross was rent away. But the danger 
is past, here, and now : This is not the country nor 
the age of superstition : We are able to recur to what 
is pleasing and venerable in aesthetics without the 
least fear that it will lead us too far : and we Christian 
people may well rejoice that in so many directions 
we may see that which reminds us of the Sacrifice 
which is our salvation. You know why the ground 
plan of this church is what it is : you trace the vener- 
able form yet in the ruins of our once majestic 
cathedral : and rude as was the still more ancient 
church on the height above the harbour, yet the form 
is there that speaks of Christ's death and atonement. 
After centuries, the crosses, torn down from the 
gables of the great church of Glasgow, went up 
again ; not a voice raised against the restoration : 
and wherever a decorous place of worship is built for 
the use of the Church, or of any other communion in 
this country, the ancient symbol is held out again, 
without doubt or fear. Borne aloft thus before all 
men ; shown wherever our eyes are turned ; surely if 
days should ever return wherein the doctrine of 
Christ's atoning sacrifice shall be held back, there 
will be emblems everywhere to rebuke the unfaithful 
preachers who shall keep back the blessed gospel of 
Christ crucified ! May God forbid that those days 
should ever be ! Rather be it the preacher's resolu- 



The Glory of the Cross. 



225 



tion, as was Paul's, M I determined not to know any- 
thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him cruci- 
fied ! " And the sum of all his message : " We preach 
Christ crucified : unto the Jews a stumbling-block, 
and unto the Greeks foolishness : but unto them 
which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the 
power of God, and the wisdom of God." 



■p 



XV. 



THE PEACEFUL PILGRIMAGE. 

4< See that ye fall not out by the way." — Gen. xlv. 24. 

SO spake the patriarch Joseph, as he sent his 
brethren away, after he had made himself known 
to them. The sons of Jacob had found their brother, 
so long parted from them by their own heartless 
wickedness; so bitterly mourned by their aged father: 
They had found him in the great place of Governor 
over all the land of Egypt. But his sudden rise had 
not prevailed to change his kind heart : He was as 
when he was a boy. The Governor of Egypt was 
the brother still : and never were tears of deeper sin- 
cerity than those he shed, as he made himself known. 
For their wicked cruelty towards himself he made the 
best excuse it would admit, as he showed how through 
it (though no thanks to them) there had wrought the 
over-ruling hand of God : and in the earnest question- 
ing as to the health and welfare of his father, so long 
unseen, we get assurance the most pleasing, that if the 
stripling shepherd, the poor forgotten prisoner in the 
dungeon, had climbed to the height of rank and power 



The Peaceful Pilgrimage. 227 



in that country of early civilisation and enlighten- 
ment, he had taken with him the warm feelings of a 
lowlier station : he had saved the home-bred heart. 
And surely, in the judgment of all right-thinking 
people, that most amiable of all the patriarchs was a 
nobler man, with that kind affection in his bosom and 
those unfeigned tears upon his cheek, than in all the 
greatness of the land of Egypt. He could not know, 
indeed, that the story of his various lot was to come by 
so straight a road to the heart of millions after he was 
gone : that it was to be cherished among the dearest 
recollections of our childhood ; and to touch us even 
when hardened somewhat by the wear of years. 

There is one little point in the story, in which the 
whole spirit of the man looks out : It is that related 
in this text. Laden with the good things of Egypt, 
and bearing a message to their aged father which he 
would think the best thing that ever came from Egypt, 
they are just setting out for their fathers pinched 
home : and lingering around them as though loth to 
lose sight of them, Joseph stands to see them go. He 
has said to them all he has to say, and the little cara- 
van is just departing : but one last thought arises, one 
parting advice. Go, it is as though he said, and God 
be with you : let the way look short and the sky smile 
its brightest : But there is one thing that will spoil 
every earthly blessing, that will embitter the journey 
that ought to be pleasantest : and so beware of that 
thing : " See that ye fall not out by the way." 



228 The Peaceful Pilgrimage. 



We can well believe that the words were seriously 
said, and in like manner listened to. For they touched 
a link of association that brought back -the past. 
Something of mild reproof mingled with their thought- 
ful kindliness. The thought of a brother once hated 
without a reason, once sold to strangers for a slave, 
would remind all, reprovingly, that there might be 
bitter and woful difference between the children of 
one parent. And as the brethren led aw r ay their asses, 
it would be with bowed heads and in silence : Surely 
for that journey at least it would be all unity and 
peace amid the little company plodding on its way. 
The history of that journey is not written : but doubt- 
less the brothers did not "fall out by the way" 

That journey is long since over, and the travellers 
dead. Many centuries part us from those dis- 
tant days. Yet we can well understand that not 
only to the little company of Jacob's sons was the 
counsel in the text needful and valuable. And we may 
think, not quite fancifully, that purged from all that 
was merely temporary and transient, as voices are 
that speak to us from days so long departed, the 
patriarch's voice comes to us across all these ages, 
with, its counsel so kindly and so sound. 

For we may very fitly and profitably extend the 
counsel to a longer journey and a greater company. 
We are all "pilgrims on the earth/' travelling on 
through this life with equal steps : and specially such 
as have the good hope through grace that they are 



The Peaceful Pilgrimage. 229 



numbered in the Church of Christ's people, pardoned 
and renewed, specially confess themselves such, and 
"declare plainly that they seek a country." And 
surely, Christian friends, as we travel on towards the 
same Home, through like dangers and temptations, it 
becomes us to remember and act upon the kindly 
counsel of Joseph. And truly we need it : need the 
counsel, and God's grace to keep it, not to fall out by 
the way./\We are sadly given, even Christian people, 
to quarrelling. I do not mean that decorous folk, 
making a Christian profession, are at all likely to use 
bodily violence to one another : or even to get to an 
outspoken interchange of hard words. Dealing blows, 
and calling names, are the rough means of rough 
people : our wordy fence is of a more refined charac- 
ter, though oftentimes words are intended to serve as 
poisoned arrows, and to leave a rankling sting. And 
such darts are often launched in the mildest tones, 
and with the most scrupulous courtesy of outward 
demeanour. It is hard to say what mark of the old 
unsanctifled nature lingers longest in pardoned and 
regenerate Christian folk. A great living preacher 
has said that his experience has led him to think that 
the besetting sin, last uprooted from believing hearts, 
is untruthfulness : that no evil tendency seems able to 
live so long beside true grace, as the tendency to mis- 
represent an opponent ; — and in stating his views to 
give them just the unhappy little twist in the direction 
of being very absurd, very wicked, or very unsound. 



230 The Peaceful Pilgrimage. 

We have all known instances that look this way : but 
possibly the sin of uncharitableness lingers as long as 
any, and. the evil impulse at many turnings, on many 
wretched little occasions, to "fall out by the way." 
There are good Christian people who are terribly 
touchy: very ready to take offence : very jealous of 
any lack of recognition of their own dignity and im- 
portance : very sore if their advice is not acted upon : 
very ready to throw difficulties in the way of even 
what they know to be a good work if it was under- 
taken without their being first consulted. There are 
Christian people who are very ready to get angry with 
those who differ from them in religion or in politics : 
Christian people who will renounce communion with 
a fellow-Christian because he thinks it right to kneel 
at prayer in church and to stand at praise, while they 
(most honestly) hold that these things are of the insti- 
gation of Satan. Then there are really good Chris- 
tians who will always bear as hard as possible on a 
neighbour who has made some mistake; — who will 
not let such a one get easily out of his blunder, but 
subject him to the greatest possible humiliation ere 
they let him do so. The same people are very 
prompt to point out a neighbour's inconsistency : 
how at some time or other he thought on some sub- 
ject or other differently from what he thinks now : as 
if every human being with a teachable mind were not 
of necessity the most inconsistent of creatures, and 
only he has a right to think alike year after year who 



The Peace/id Pilgrimage. 2 3 1 



has nothing further that he can learn or know. Then 
there is that in human nature, even in the human 
nature of Christian people, which makes them apt to 
split off from one another into separate bands or 
armies, parted by deep gulfs of mutual misapprehen- 
sion and dislike ; and thus go on through the pilgri- 
mage of life, through the wilderness of this world, 
fairly fallen out by the way, fallen out never to be re- 
united in this world, hating each other with no rational 
ground for the unchristian affection. We all know 
how political differences of opinion keep men apart 
who ought to be fast friends. "We all know that, 
practically, social intercourse ceases between people 
who hold opposed views on questions of Church 
arrangement and government and support. As for 
thinking no evil of an opponent, happily one has 
sometimes seen that in a man of specially noble and 
cultivated mind : but as for anything like a general 
bearing of one another's burdens, as for in honour 
preferring one another, I do not know where in this 
world, unless in the descriptions and precepts of the 
New Testament, you will find much of that. As for 
the Catholic Church of Christ, I suppose no intelli- 
gent person will deny, that none of the social differ- 
ences that exist between classes or individuals, founding 
on secular reasons, approach in virulence of hatred to 
the differences which part those who profess and call 
themselves Christians. It has grown into a common- 
place now, a familiar household word, his bitter but 



232 The Peaceful Pilgrimage. 

true statement who said that many Christians have 
not religion enough to love, but just religion enough 
to hate one another. Soldiers and servants of the 
same Prince of peace, pilgrims to the same Home, 
people who were to be known of all men for the dis- 
ciples of their Lord in that they have love one 
towards another, surely, if you were very simple and 
very ignorant you would say that if anyw T here, here 
you would have a united band. We have looked long 
enough at the fact : it is not a pleasant thing to look 
at : and we shall look another way. We have seen 
enough to make sure that we are not assuming too 
much when we take for granted that the counsel in 
the text is one which Christian pilgrims are not 
beyond the need of: and the remainder of our time 
shall be given to looking at certain reasons which 
enforce the counsel. 

There is one, obvious, good, and strong : and like 
all good reasons, capable of being very shortly stated. 
You remember the appeal of Moses, when he saw two 
Hebrews striving in Egypt, long ago, and wished to 
make peace between them. "Ye are brethren:" that 
was all he said. He felt, and they felt, and you feel, 
that it was enough. For it was an appeal, and a 
direct one, to sympathies common to all men. There 
are some arguments which you would not think of 
presenting to a man unless you knew something about 
him : about his peculiar cast of mind and way of 



The Peaceful Pilgrimage, 233 

thinking. I am afraid that some of us have occa- 
sionally been guilty in the way of suggesting to foolish 
people arguments which could have no force unless 
with a fool : while you would not have ventured to 
state such to any one possessed of tolerable penetra- 
tion or even of common sense. x And, apart from 
such extreme cases, you know that there are consi- 
derations which would tell with mighty force on a 
person of a particular training, a particular original 
constitution, a particular way of looking at things : 
while the same considerations might fail to produce 
the least impression on his next neighbour. But there 
are arguments that make their appeal to feelings which 
the man who has not is no man : and that of Moses 
is doubtless one of these. " Ye are brethren:" every 
one feels the rebuke to all variance that the simple 
words contain. Moses was right to stop when he had 
said them : though he had spoken for another hour, 
he could not have made his meaning clearer or more 
forcible. And I think that as he judged it best to 
be brief, when he presented such a consideration, 
so it is needless that much should be said now in 
enforcing this head of discourse. It is not neces- 
sary to argue at length that we should not fall out by 
the way, because Christian people are children of the 
same heavenly Father, and claim the same Blessed 
Saviour for the Elder Brother of all ; and look for 
their rest at last in the same peaceful Home. And if 
it be a sad sight to see the estrangement of those who 



2 34 The Peaceful Pilgrimage. 

said their first prayer at the same mother's knee, and 
spent the days of childhood by the same fireside ; 
surely it is no less unnatural and mournful to see 
envyings, strifes, and every form of unchristian enmity, 
among those who trust they are born again of the 
same Holy Spirit's operation, and towards whom the 
same Redeemer has felt a common love. It ought 
not so to be. It argues, somewhere, a wretched dis- 
regard of what we all profess to believe. 

A second reason why Christians on their pilgrimage 
should not "fall out by the way," is, that they are 
surrounded by enemies and dangers. So it is wise to 
preserve a united array. 

We can trace the resemblance between the Church, 
and the train that in the stillness of the Eastern day, 
was wont to traverse the Eastern desert. Though our 
pilgrimage be not, as theirs, with the tinkling of 
drowsy bells, and the camel's soft step over the plain 
that stretches to the horizon, but in more common- 
place scenes and ways, — as by dusty paths of toilsome 
duty, and painful trial ; still we have that about our 
pilgrimage which matches the marauding Arab as on 
his swift steed he hung watchful on the rear of the 
company, — and the savage beast crouching close in 
his covert, to spring on the unwary lingerer as he 
passed near. We are pressed round by many powerful 
spiritual enemies : by a host of subtle and evil spirits, 
seeking to devour, to mislead : by innumerable peril- 



The Peaceful Pilgrimage. 235 

ous influences from without and from within : and thus 
menaced by a common danger, even if we should 
chance to differ, it would not be safe for us (you 
would say) to fight out our quarrel now. We are, as 
it were, in the enemy's country : and prudence, to 
name no higher principle, would tell us to beware of 
opening our ranks : to avoid strife as we value our 
safety. The consideration is a telling one in things 
worldly. I can think that if you took even a band of 
men who had no very warm regard for one another, 
and set them to traverse by night some intricate tract 
of country, with thickets, raging water-courses, and 
deep marshes, — and told them that country was 
occupied by a great army of savage enemies, thirsting 
for their life, — I can think that such a band would be 
good friends if it were only for that night : that all 
differences would be left to be settled after they had 
got beyond their enemies' reach. A common danger 
has great virtue to unite : and that not merely for the 
time it lasts, but after it is over. You remember the 
old story of the three survivors of a desperate forlorn- 
hope : and how one of them ended his account, long 
afterwards, of that fearful time, by saying " And right 
dear friends were we for ever after.'' 

Christian brethren, surely we have this reason for 
unity. Many unfriendly eyes mark our strifes : 
They give great occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. 
And the enemy takes the occasion. The bitter 
enmities, the groundless and deplorable schisms, in 



236 The Peaceful Pilg r image. 

the Church of Christ, form a stock commonplace on 
the lips of the enemies of our holy faith. The outer 
world, too, is always ready to set the stumbling or 
failure of any professed believer to the discredit of all. 
And such, in its essential nature, is all contention, 
that it is quite impossible to engage in it without throw- 
ing down some of the fences which guard us against 
our spiritual foes, — our ensnaring temptations. Angry 
and vindictive feeling : unfairness and untruthfulness : 
the arts of misrepresentation ; and the arms of in- 
timidation where that is possible : the eyes shut 
against light, whether from argument or information, 
— shut sometimes unconsciously, sometimes half-con- 
sciously, sometimes quite consciously : these are the 
kind of things that come of falling out by the way 
among Christians. I have looked on, carefully, at a 
good deal of religious controversy, both theological 
and ecclesiastical : and I can say sincerely, I never 
saw it conducted with candour : rarely with common 
honesty : not always with common decency. I am 
speaking, I ask you to observe, of the controversies 
of good Christian men. I have indeed seen fairness, 
honesty, temperate kindliness, in one of two contend- 
ing Christians : Never in both : commonly in neither. 
For unfairness and bitterness on one side tend to 
gradually produce the like on the other. And I 
could, with the greatest possible facility, point out 
examples of the most rancorous malignity, and the 
most unsparing use of lying and slandering, on the 



The Peaceful Pilgrimage. 237 

part of persons making a very loud profession of 
religion. Every one knows that the kind of publica- 
tion which is with bitter irony called a religious news- 
paper, will, to put down an opponent, publish things 
more wicked and dishonest than any print would do ? 
professing to be guided by no higher rules than those 
of common honour and decency. It is indeed to an 
unsophisticated mind very bewildering to find a man 
ending a tissue of rancorous and stupid slanders, by 
solemnly taking God to witness that in all these he has 
been actuated by a single eye to the glory of Christ. 
Now what woful proof is here that strife has opened 
the door of the heart for the entrance of a host of 
spiritual enemies: has involved in grievous condem- 
nation those engaged in it; and done them unutter- 
able harm ! Ah, there is much that must be repented 
of, much that must be amended, before the eager 
controversialist will be in any degree meet for heaven. 
Just as strife, in the company of Joseph's brethren 
going through the desert, would have made them an 
easy prey to the prowling robber, so sure it is that to 
fall out by the way among Christians, is very likely to 
open the heart of each to the successful assaults of 
some of the worst foes of all. 

There is one more reason which may fitly be men- 
tioned, why Christian pilgrims, travelling heavenward, 
should remember Joseph's kindly advice. It is that by 
so doing, they will make their way so much pleasanter 



238 The Peaceful Pilgrimage. 

and happier. We may be sure that if Jacob's sons 
had spent the hours of their journey in angry alterca- 
tion, the journey could not have been a pleasant one. 
And when at last they got to their home, flushed with 
passion, dissatisfied each with himself, and looking 
grimly each on the others, they would have no 
pleasant remembrance of the way. The falling out 
by the way would be quite enough to utterly take 
away anything like enjoyableness from it. But every 
one knows how different it is to traverse any way in 
pleasant company and in kindly converse. How 
short the miles look : how cheerful the scene ! Often 
as we may have walked that road, such things can 
make some one journey over it stand out memorably 
from all the rest. And if to " fall out by the way " 
has this power to embitter our earthly journeys ; and 
if kindly and united converse has this power to 
smooth the roughest road and shorten the longest; 
surely it is so no less with the pilgrimage towards the 
Home above. It is not saying too much, to say that 
it is pleasant to be at peace with all around us ; and 
painful to be at war with any. Even the firmest 
conviction that you are in the right in a quarrel, will 
not make it other than painful to be involved in one. 
I know, indeed, that in the case of some, whom 
charity would hope to be true pilgrims of the cross, 
this seems not to be so. There are those professing 
Christians who never seem to be content but when 
they are falling out by the way ; to whom con- 



The Peacefttl Pilgrimage. 239 



troversy, and all that comes of it, seem to be the 
very breath of life : to whom it appears an absolute 
necessity of existence, to have some one to differ 
from, — and of course to vilify and misrepresent and 
accuse of heresy. But such men are the exception 
and not the rule : and till the tendencies of human 
nature are reversed, strife will be a thing to mar 
happiness and not make it. And most certain it is 
that the vital air of true religion lies not in the fevered 
atmosphere of debate, but rather in the milder region 
of counsels at one, of brotherly kindness and charity. 

It causes suffering to ordinary people to be in- 
volved in strife. It is a dull, rankling pain. It has 
a cross-influence on all you do : and reading your 
Bible, and praying to God, it will often come across 
you with a sad sense of self-upbraiding. You will not 
be able entirely to acquit yourself of blame. You 
will feel that all this is not very consistent with your 
Christian profession : with your seasons at the com- 
munion-table : with your prayers for forgiveness as 
you hope to be forgiven : with the remembrance that 
in a little while you must lay down your weary head, 
and die. The man who has dealt another a sting- 
ing blow, in return for some injury : the man who has 
made an exceedingly clever and bitter retort in speech 
or writing • may feel a certain complacency, thinking 
how well he has done it, and what vexation he has 
caused a fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer : but he 
cannot be happy. He cannot know the real glow 



240 



The Peaceful Pilgrimage. 



of heart which you will feel, my friend, when God's 
Blessed Spirit has helped you with all your heart to 
do something kind and good to an offending brother. 
" Blessed are the peace-makers : " God has so made 
us that it must always be so : and while our nature, 
and the nature of all things, stays what it is, Unhappy 
must be the strife-makers. So, if you know any who 
are always trying to pick a quarrel with you : who are 
determined to fall out by the way, in spite of all you 
can do to keep the peace : be sorry for them : not 
angry with them, but heartily sorry for them. They 
may indeed cause you a little annoyance ; but they 
cause themselves a thousand times more. The vexa- 
tion they may give you, is but the feeble reflection of 
what they themselves have felt. God has so ordered 
it, as to make it inevitably sure, that the contentious, 
quarrelsome, envious spirit shall punish itself, most 
justly and most severely. 

So we have looked at a sound advice we all 
need ; and thought of a sin that doth very easily 
beset us. It is the sin of quarrelling : of splitting 
off from one another : of trumpery little irritations 
and coolnesses, — poor and contemptible in them- 
selves ; bad for our soul's health ; and greatly abating 
the peace and joy we ought to know as Christian 
pilgrims. Looking at our many blessings, temporal 
and spiritual, I daresay we all sometimes think we 
ought to be making more of life ; not merely in the 



The Peaceful Pilgrimage. 24 r 

sense of turning it to better account, but in the sense 
of really enjoying it as we go on our pilgrimage way. 
And how much we might all help each other to do 
that, by mutual kindness : by bearing one another's 
burdens : by not being hard on each other's little 
failures in temper : by standing (if need be) a good 
deal from one whom we know to be a friend, and 
good in the main; by not being ready to take 
offence : by candour, kindly candour, in frankly 
telling a friend when we think we have cause of 
offence : by the utter blotting out of that most con- 
temptible of all things, — I mean, without seeking or 
offering explanation, taking the pet, and drawing off 
in sulky silence. In a comparatively small com- 
munity like this, surely all this is our special duty : 
and our peculiar temptation no doubt is to offend in 
all these ways. We see so much of each other, that 
doubtless the specks on the sun grow apparent: and 
if there be any one in this city who is not aware of 
his own faults, he may get what compensation he 
can. from the assurance that these are exceedingly 
well known to all his friends. We have, most of us, 
taken the measure of one another : not, let it be 
hoped, in an unkindly way: yet we know the weak- 
ness, the folly, the little bursts of petulance or self- 
conceit : But we do not know what is being resisted, 
or what is being borne : That each knows for him- 
self : and if we knew it all better, we should love each 
other better, — help each other more heartily, — bear 

Q 



242 The Peaceful Pilgrimage. 

longer with one another. Now let us try to 
do these things harder than we have tried as 
yet : asking God's Spirit to help us. When we feel 
the temptation to uncharitable thought, or to that 
smart speech with is rarely charitable ; let us struggle 
against it, and resolutely put it down, asking the 
Holy Ghost to strengthen us. He will help us, if 
He sees we are trying our best for ourselves : not 
otherwise. And so, even amid these present strifes, 
we shall anticipate something of the peace of that 
Better Country, where we are sure of this amid all 
our ignorance of it, that there is no quarrelling, no 
drawing off, no misapprehension nor falling out amid 
its holy and happy spirits. So shall He help us, that 
Spirit of all love and unity, as Christian men and 
women ; as members of many families and house- 
holds : as members of a Christian congregation : as 
members of the Catholic Church of Christ, one in 
Him amid all its sad divisions \ to bear one another's 
burdens : to aid one another by kind words and 
deeds : to diffuse a kindly atmosphere of peace 
around us wherever we go : till we reach, through 
Him Who is the Giver of peace, that peaceful 
Home, where all anger and strife are done with for 
ever ! 



XVI. 



THE UNSEEN GOD. 
"Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself."— Isaiah xlv\ 15. 

DO not be startled by these words : they tell us 
something which is the strain of many texts of 
Holy Scripture. Said our blessed Saviour to St Peter, 
as He washed the Apostles' feet, " What I do thou 
knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.'' 
We read in Exodus these words : ;< Moses drew near 
unto the thick darkness where God was." Said the 
wise king Solomon, " It is the glory of God to conceal 
a thing." " Thy way," said the Psalmist, " is in the 
sea, and Thy path in the great waters, and Thy foot- 
steps are not known." And St John puts side by 
side the truths of God's manifestation and God's 
invisibility : " No man hath seen God at any time : 
the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the 
Father, He hath declared Him." In another psalm 
we read " Pie made darkness His secret place : His 
pavilion round about Him were dark waters and 
thick clouds of the sky." Then St Paul writes of 
Almighty God as " dwelling in the light which no 



244 



The Unseen God. 



man can approach unto : Whom no man hath seen, 
nor can see." And all these words sound like echoes 
of the great evangelical Prophet's : " Yerily Thou art 
a God that hidest Thyself." 

As for us, we are the children of the light and of 
the day. The Sun of Righteousness hath arisen upon 
us, with healing in His wings. And therefore, we 
cannot understand nor imagine the utter darkness in 
which thoughtful, sinful, and sorrowful men lived in 
the ages and lands to which Revelation did not 
reach : the darkness not merely as concerned God, 
but as concerned all the things which it is vital for 
poor sinful creatures like us to know. What they 
themselves were, and whence they came : what was 
the world in which they were placed : what was their 
end, and what their Author : all was uncertain ; and 
men did spiritually grope in the dark. And specially, 
when the wisest and best of Heathens, casting aside 
the vulgar belief in a great multitude of inferior gods, 
tried (in St Paul's expressive words) to " seek the 
Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find 
Him ; " oh how often a thought must have been pre- 
sent to their minds like that set forth in the Prophet's 
words that form my text ! 

But the light grew, age by age. God's message, His 
inspired Word, has told us many things which we could 
never have discovered for ourselves ; and has shown 
us " the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," 
" Who is the Image of the Invisible God." While 



i he Unseen God. 



245 



many wise men debated and wondered what God made 
man for, every child in this country that has gone to 
school knows that " Man's chief end is to glorify God, 
and to enjoy Him for ever.'"' And we know that " he 
who hath seen Christ hath seen the Father : " while 
we (as we humbly trust) have seen Him with the eye 
of faith ; — have " looked unto Him/' in looking to 
Whom is salvation ; — have found Him Whom he that 
heartily seeks, finds. Is it not needless, then, in this 
time of gospel light, to take up the words of a former 
period, and to speak of a hidden God ? 

But is God not hidden ? Is it not for want of some 
blazing manifestation, some crushing evidence that 
would annihilate doubt, that there are men, even now, 
who can stand forward in the presence of their fellow- 
sinners, and say, as men said too in the Psalmist's 
days, " There is no God 1 " In those days, they were 
fools that said so. But now, who does not know, they 
are men of science and of learning, thoughtful philo- 
sophers, and eloquent historians. And what a drear}', 
awful, soul-starving creed is theirs ! 

Is God not hidden ? Is it not true that there are 
many people among ourselves, professing to be Chris- 
tian people, who say they believe there is a God, and 
that God is the lawgiver and the judge of all, and that 
yet He " so loved the world as to send His only- 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should 
not perish, but have everlasting life ; " and yet in 
whom this belief is a thing so faint and ineffectual, 



246 



The Unseen God. 



that they go on thinking, talking, and living, just as 
if there were no God at all ? If men realised Who it 
is that " besets them behind and before, and lays His 
hand upon them : " if they remembered Who is " the 
greatest Inhabitant of every place where men are 
living : " that there is One who reads their heart and 
life, and lays up in a memory that cannot forget 
every particular of what they think say and do, and 
all this to the end of one day calling them to a strict 
account; would they live as they do now? My 
friends, if we always remembered that God is beside 
us, and watching us, what a solemn difference would 
that remembrance make ! For we do not always 
remember it, because God is so hidden from us. It 
is with us as it was with the patriarch Job : " Behold, 
we go forward, but He is not there : and backward, but 
we cannot perceive Him : On the left hand, where He 
doth work, but we cannot behold Him : He hideth 
Himself on the right hand, that we cannot see Him !" 

Now, surely it is right that we should think, 
for once, and for a little, while, of a truth which 
you see has been so much in the experience of 
God's people, for thousands of years. It has been 
the desire of their hearts, to "see the King in 
His beauty : " yet, though Christ has said that 
" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
God," there stands the solemn declaration, "Thou 
canst not see My face : for there shall no man see 
God, and live." And you know what wonderful 



The Unseen God. 247 



virtue and efficacy the Apostle John ascribes to the 
Beatific Vision of the Redeemer in glory : nothing 
less than the making us like Himself. " We know 
that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him : 
for we shall see Him as He is." Things strike differ- 
ent people differently : and anything like mystical 
piety does not commonly commend itself to the 
minds of our countrymen : yet you know how inex- 
pressibly dear to many earnest Christians that assur- 
ance has been. The last sermon ever preached by 
that great and good man Dr Arnold, whose noble 
and earnest spirit we may well venerate, while dif- 
fering from many of his opinions, was from the text I 
have this moment repeated. And the last words he 
ever uttered from his pulpit were these, said with 
marked fervency, — "Yes, the mere contemplation of 
Christ shall transform us into His likeness." 

"Now, we see through a glass, darkly : but then, face 
to face." Meanwhile, we are "present in the body, 
and absent from the Lord." Meanwhile we trust in a 
Saviour, " Whom, having not seen, we love." Let us 
think of certain senses in which we may still say to our 
Heavenly Father, even as we see His glory in the face 
of His Son our Redeemer, " Verily Thou art a God 
that hidest Thyself." And first, we may say that God 
is hidden, behind the veil of material nature. 

This material universe is full of God's visible work- 
ing : but it is the visible working of an invisible hand* 



248 



The Unseen God. 



Of course, we all know that there is not a heart that 
beats, which God does not keep in motion : not a 
flower that blows, which He does not. rear and tend : 
not a planet that circles, which He does not direct on 
its way. And yet, how silently the great system goes 
on ! How thoroughly does nature conceal nature's 
God ! " Lo, these are parts of His ways/' said Job : 
" but how little a portion is heard of Him !" The 
work meets us at every turn : the Worker is never 
seen. Seasons revolve : and all the giant machine of 
the universe is in motion around us : but not a trace 
of Him who moves it all ! We feel the heart beat, 
day after day : but we can discern nothing of the 
power that makes it do so. The earth, sustained by 
the unseen Hand, still seems to us, as it seemed to 
Job, to " hang upon nothing/' No one ever saw the 
pencil that traces the delicate tint on the rose, nor 
the touch which gradually draws out the green leaves 
in spring. Now, all these things are the merest 
commonplaces : but, when we realise them, how sol- 
emn and awful ! To think of the mighty agencies that 
are going on around us and within us, compass- 
ing us behind and before, sustaining each of us, and 
everything of which our senses tell us : and to think 
that the great Being who directs them all, though near 
us, though within us and around us, is never for a 
moment seen; but remains "the King Eternal, Immor- 
tal, Invisible ! " It would be an awful thing if there 
passed before our eyes now, in this house of prayer, a 



The Unseen God. 



249 



flash of that light that once glowed on Sinai 5 and de- 
clared the presence of the living God on earth : but 
surely it is just as awful to remember, that God is cer- 
tainly here now : that He is in the midst of us : that 
He is within these walls, protecting and sustaining 
each of us : and that yet He is withdrawn from our 
sight and sense as effectually as though He were not 
here at all ! Unseen in that transparent atmosphere : 
inaudible in His coming and going to the sharpest 
ear, He is in this place, according to His promise. Oh 
let us worship reverently before Him, " as seeing Him 
Who is invisible ! " 

In the second place, we may say that God is 
hidden that His character and perfections are 
clouded to our view ; by many things in the moral 
government of this world. Looking round on 
a great deal we see here, it is hard to feel that 
God is looking on at it all, and yet not interfering 
to set things right. And all that faith can say, 
in the sight of unutterable sin and misery, is this : 
" Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Faith 
says, " I know my God so well, that I will not be 
driven from my simple confidence in Him, even by a 
hundred sorrowful sights I see, in which I can discern 
no good at all." There are few days which a minister 
can spend in pastoral work in a large town parish or 
congregation, without seeing and hearing things in 
whose presence he must just say that. 



250 The Unseen God. 

For this is a world of trouble, and a world of sin. 
And human reason is quite incapable of understand- 
ing how there should be such things as sin and misery 
in the dominion of a God of infinite power and in- 
finite love. It is best to confess that at once. I do 
not know how to reconcile the infinite goodness of God 
with the existence of the want and woe you may see even 
in the beautiful capital of Scotland, which almost break 
the philanthropist's heart. Still less do I know how to 
reconcile it with the awful disadvantage at which the 
poor little children of these frightful dens stand, as 
concerns the next world. What chance have they, 
God help them! Here, we can do no more than 
" believe where we cannot prove : " and say " Verily 
Thou art a God that hidest Thyself!" 

I am not going to dwell upon this subject : it can 
do no good. All I would say is, Read the history of 
the awful atrocities of the first French Revolution : 
Read the accounts which have lately been published 
of the hideous cruelties which are of everyday occur- 
rence in the central tracts of Africa : Read any 
account of the Feudal System in Europe in the 
middle ages : Read any accurate account of the 
slave-trade, and of slavery as it used to be in America : 
and think whether you can show the reason why the 
Moral Governor of the world looks on in silence at 
things which we know must be unutterably hateful to 
Him. We have all read of things, and some of us may 
have known of things, that made us cry, " Why sleeps 



The Unseen God. 251 

the thunder ! " Some day all this will be set right : 
but why should it ever be wrong? Reason cannot 
answer : Here Faith must be our support. Yes, and 
the simplest faith. Never was there truer wisdom than 
that of an old bed-ridden fisherman, who when his 
sick wife said she could not see the good of her 
illness to anybody ; that the Lord's ways were hard 
ways for poor folk ; replied that he had long since 
given up trying to find the reason and rights of 
things, but left the Lord to make all that straight : 
which, seeing a day was coming when we shall know 
even as we are known, he thought was but reasonable, 
and only wanted on our part some of that spirit which 
makes a man steer northward by the captain's orders, 
when his own mind is to bear due south. There is 
wisdom : we cannot get beyond that, in thinking 
of God's dealings with this world. All God's ways 
are kind and right, though we cannot see it now. 
And we trust Him. Still, it is dark. You remem- 
ber the Psalmist, in his day of crushing distress. " I 
was dumb : I opened not my mouth : because Thou 
didst it ! " 

In the third place, we may think, in illustration of 
the text, of the singular fact in the constitution of our 
minds, that faith falls so vastly short of realisation. 
There is a great difference between believing a thing, 
and feeling it. We all believe that God "is, and that 
He is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." 



252 



The Unseen God. 



But we do not realise this as substantially as we do 
these walls, and our neighbours near us. We all 
believe that God is here to-day : but how few of us 
feel that He is here as really as the person next us ; 
and that every word now being said is actually falling 
upon His ear ! Truly said the prophet, " Hearing ye 
shall hear and shall not understand ; and seeing ye 
shall see, and not perceive." 

If God were now, as in former days, to manifest 
Himself to our external senses, by flames kindled 
and voices uttered on another Sinai, we readily think 
that this would constrain us to feel His presence. 
No man would pass the day, from morning till 
evening, thinking of a thousand things, but God not 
in all his thoughts, if he had only to turn his eye to 
the horizon, and there was the blazing light to put 
him in mind. And yet, why should this visible 
representation affect us more than the firm belief we 
have in our mind and heart that God is, and is here ? 

It is easy to utter the name of God. It is easy to 
say, " I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker 
of heaven and earth. " But oh to realise the mean- 
ing of the words ! Sometimes, indeed, the eye of 
faith appears to be preternaturally strengthened : the 
scales of sense fall off from it : and we feel something 
of what God is, what Eternity is, what Salvation is. 
In the silent night, far from means and ordinances: 
at the table of holy communion, remembering Christ 
and by faith feeding upon Him : clearer views dawn 



The Unseen God. 



253 



upon the soul, now and then : clearer conceptions 
of the awful realities amid which it is living. But 
still, in the daily walks and duties of life, faith and 
realisation remain far apart. To believe a spiritual 
truth, and to actually feel it, are quite different 
things. 

In these three senses, then, even in this gospel 
light, we may yet take up the great gospel prophet's 
words as to a hidden God. And you know how 
many human beings come to be practically "without 
God in the world. " Looking round on others, and 
looking in upon our own souls, what cause for sorrow 
and repentance there is, in thinking how completely 
God is forgot by many : how often forgot by all ! A 
stranger might think, that as God never leaves us, 
the thought of His presence would be always with 
us : and as in the company of some great human 
being our attention is not readily distracted to lesser 
persons and things, so it would be in His. But what 
is the fact? Do we always remember, wherever we 
are, that God is there? Do we live before him? 
Do we walk with Him? Do we set Him continually 
before us ? Is it truly our great desire to be recon- 
ciled to Him by the blood of Christ ; and to be filled 
with His Spirit? Is that the great end. we are aiming 
at, day after day ? Or do not worldly designs often 
take up all our care and labour ? Do not we live many 
hours as if there were no God ? 



^54 



The Unseen God. 



Now I know that we are all ready to think that 
this fact, that God is so hidden from us, sets 
us at a terrible disadvantage spiritually. We are 
ready to think that if God's presence were sensible. — 
if we could see Him. — it would keep us right : we 
should not sin, nor trifle, any more; we should 
earnestly set ourselves to the working out of our 
salvation, to the finding the Saviour, to the clothing 
of our sinful souls in that mantle of His imputed 
righteousness in which only we can enter without 
fear into the presence of God. We are ready to say 
to our Maker, in the largest sense of the words, " If 
I could see Thee, 'twould be well with me ! ! ' Why 
then is God hidden? And why are all spiritual 
truths so faintly discerned? For if we could but 
feel and realise the things we believe, it would be 
our salvation : We need to be told nothing new, but 
only to be made to feel what is meant by heaven 
and hell, by a sinful soul, by a Redeemer's sacrifice ! 
And why is it that the organs of spiritual perception 
are so benumbed and ineffectual? why do they 
convey their message so dimly, like sound to deaf 
ears, like touch to the palsied hand? You know 
we always feel that we need food : but we do not feel 
in that distinct way that we need a saving interest in 
Christ, and that we need to be renewed by the Holy 
Spirit. You know we are always perfectly aware of 
the presence of the friend that sits beside us : why 
are we not as well aware of the presence of God ? 



The Unseen God. 



2 55 



Oh why do not sinners see more plainly the destruc- 
tion they are going on to : surely that would compel 
them to come to Christ 

Our answer to all this is. that it is God's manifest 
purpose to make this world a place, in a certain 
sense, of trial. It is not indeed a place of trial in 
that sense that by our deservings here, we can merit 
heaven, and happiness there : Xo, in that meaning 
of the word man's trial ended, man's probation was 
finished, when Adam fell and we all fell in him ; and 
all our salvation, all our hope, is through God's free 
grace in Christ. But this world is still a place of trial 
in this sense; that it is God's manifest purpose that 
it should be possible for us here to go right or to go 
wrong. We are to make our choice between life 
and death. " Come unto Me," says our Blessed 
Redeemer, as implying that in a true degree, it rests 
with ourselves whether we shall come or not. " Be- 
lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be 
saved/' said Paul and Silas : as implying that if we 
heartily desire to do that, the grace will not be 
lacking to enable us to do i f In short, candour, 
and common sense, enable us quite well to see that 
God's grace and Spirit, just like God's predesti- 
nation of all things, leave man's free agency quire 
certain and real : and so leave this world a place 
of trial. 

And this world is a place of trial just because of 
this : that it is possible for a sane man to go wrong. 



256 The Unseen God. 



There is enough, in God's Providence and God's 
Word, to show an honest soul that wants to do right, 
what to do : there is enough to make us feel we are 
poor sinners, needing a great Saviour and a great 
Sanctifier. But there is not so much as would drive 
a wicked worldly person to the Saviour, and to holy 
obedience, whether he would or not. And though 
to reject Christ, and go on towards perdition with 
open eyes, be the very height of madness and folly, 
still it is not insanity or idiocy in the ordinary sense : 
it does not stamp a man as unfit for the common 
work of life. As Dr Johnson said, Poor Christopher 
Smart the poet was put in an asylum because he used 
to fall on his knees in the streets and say his prayers : 
Now in solemn truth, the man that never prays at all, 
does a much more insane thing than the man who 
prays in the most unfitting circumstances : yet we 
shut up the one man and we do not shut up the 
other. It is God's purpose that it be left, in a certain 
sense, to our choice, whether we will go to Christ 
or hold away : and if He were to put on us a greater 
force than He has put already, by becoming visible, 
and by making His w T rath visibly and instantly follow 
all sin, there would be no choice; and this world 
would cease to be a place of trial. It is an essential 
part of God's plan, in dealing with His creatures, to 
treat them as responsible, and as free. He puts us in 
a world which exerts a prejudicial influence over us : 
He tells us to go and fight with that; and tells us 



The Unseen God. 



257 



how : " This is the victory that overcometh the world, 
even our faith." He tells us that He is, and that He 
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him : but 
He does not so force Himself and His terrors upon 
our sight, by becoming visible to us, as to compel all 
men, by mere fear, to obey and worship : for thus 
doing He would destroy faith as well as unbelief ; 
and would make obedience and disobedience equal. 
It would have been easy for the Almighty, by some 
awful manifestation in the instant of temptation, to 
have made sure that our first parents should not have 
committed that sin which brought death and woe into 
this world. But God, in His wisdom, would not do 
so. His responsible creatures shall be held respon- 
sible. They were able to stand, yet free to fall. And 
it is so still. God does not value extorted obedience : 
He does not keep us to the track, as you would a 
horse or mule, by the rein and the bit there is no 
resisting. 66 1 will guide thee with mine eye," is His 
promise. He will guide those who look to Him for 
guidance with a docile heart : As for those who will 
go wrong, they may ! 

Now, we may humbly say, Here is the reason why 
God is so far hidden. He is revealed enough, in 
His gracious manifestation in His dear Son, by His 
Providence, His Word, His Spirit, to show us plainly 
that His will and our duty are that we go to Christ 
and seek m Him that salvation which he who 
heartily seeks, does in that seeking find; which in 



The Unseen God, 



God's account he hath, who is deeply convinced of 
his want of it. But He will not drive us as by 
mechanical constraint : He wants the obedience of 
intelligent, moral, free, responsible beings, not of 
machines. And so. though we cannot save ourselves, 
we have no right, in common cases, to expect to be 
saved in spite of ourselves. Such a thing, indeed, has 
been : but it is not to be counted on. 

And so let us be sure of this, that the fact 
that we cannot see or realise God ; and cannot feel 
the solid reality of the unseen world \ and cannot 
feel the need of salvation as plainly as we do the 
want of food and raiment: is not an unfriendly in- 
fluence which has come upon us without God's 
remarking it : He intends us to fight at this disad- 
vantage. He designs to prove us by watching what 
we shall make of what we have. And we have quite 
enough, if we use it faithfully. The means of grace 
we have : the warnings that come to us from God's 
Providence, Word, and Spirit; are enough to put 
us without excuse, if we will not be saved : are 
enough to make this most certain, that if any here 
shall end in woe, it will be his own fault, and not 
God's. There was a man once, Christ Himself tells 
us. who thought that a little more, of warning, of 
testimony, might have saved himself, and might save 
his brethren. He prayed Abraham to send Lazarus 
from his rest, to testify to his five brethren, M lest they 
also come into this place of torment/' But what was 



The Unseen God, 



259 



Abraham's answer? "They have Moses and the 
Prophets, let them hear them ! " They have enough 
already, that is : let them give heed to that I And 
the rest of the story may perhaps make us think that 
we overvalue the good that would be done to careless 
and worldly people even by the sight of God. Per- 
haps it would make no great difference, Perhaps 
those who are godless now would be godless yet, 
even though God did not so hide Himself. For the 
rich man in woe answered to these words of Abraham, 
that if one went to his brethren from the dead, they 
would repent. But you know the reply : "If they 
hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they 
be persuaded though one rose from the dead." And 
even so, they who refuse to close with the Saviour's 
invitations now, would not be drawn to Him by any 
manifestation of God. We shall never have stronger 
reason than we have to-day, for seeking the Saviour 
if we have not found Him yet, and for holding by Him 
if we have found Him already. 

Let us earnestly pray, then, that God's Holy Spirit 
may make each of us feel, with a vividness beyond 
any result of mere argument, how weighty that reason 
is ! May He, Who only can, not merely tell us about 
them, but convince us of our sin and misery ! And 
thus making us feel that we are lost, may He lead us, 
daily, to Him who came to seek and save. 



XVII. 



JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 

" And he brought them out, and said, Sirs, What must I do to 
be saved ? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and thou shalt be saved." — Acts xvi. 30, 31. 

IT is a bad sign of us, and a thing that shows we 
are not what we should be, if this text which 
has been read in your hearing does not seem to bring 
before us just the most important and interesting sub- 
ject about which a minister can ever preach, or a 
congregation ever listen. It is a thing which shows 
how far we are from feeling as we ought, and from 
coming to God's house with the right purpose and for 
the right end ; if a plain consideration of the momen- 
tous question which is proposed in the text, and of 
the plain direct answer which is there returned to it ; 
will not fix our attention as ingenious speculation and 
brilliant imagery never did ; and present itself before 
our minds, in its unadorned but stupendous import, 
with a personal bearing on our own individual and 
eternal state, that might stand for the most eloquent 
sermon that was ever preached, or for the best speech 
that was ever spoken. 



Justification by Faith. 261 

This is an age of great questions : weary, weary 
questions. We have church questions : we have poli- 
tical questions : we have scientific questions : we have 
philosophical questions : we have literary questions : 
we have historical questions. iVnd no one can com- 
plain that they are not discussed with sufficient ingen- 
uity and sufficient keenness. But this question which 
is proposed in my text, — this question " What must 
I do to be saved ? " — is one that to every man that 
breathes is of infinitely greater importance than all 
other questions put together. Other questions may 
affect our comfort and success in this world : other 
questions may affect the soundness of our views and 
the safeness of our principles of action, in matters 
relating to this passing life : but after all earthly 
cares are gone, and all earthly debates forgotten, 
— yea for ever and for ever, — it will concern us with a 
mighty force of concern, whether we gave this question 
that earnest consideration it deserves ; and whether 
by God's grace we were enabled to find out and act out 
the right answer to it. And if all this be true, — and 
every one of you knows it is true, — what reason have 
we for thankfulness, that the answer to this question 
is so easy to discover, and so simple to understand ! 
Who shall tell us, that God has not made His way of 
salvation plain enough and comprehensible enough? 
who shall tell us, that he has honestly sought the 
Bible through, and yet not been able to find the way 
to Heaven ? What a contrast this, to the uncertainty 



262 Justification by Faith. 



about questions that bear only on this present life ! 
How men vex these, and debate them, and discuss 
them, for years and years ; and yet get not one step 
nearer to an answer to them in which all parties will 
agree ! Let an earnest inquirer, who honestly wants 
to get the truth, come to any great question in politics, 
or philosophy, or church government, — aye, or even 
the non-essentials of Christianity itself, — and he will 
find the keenest conflict of opinions, — the most con- 
tradictory views supported each by great names, — and 
no tribunal of appeal to which he can go in his per- 
plexity, to get these weaning doubts dissipated, and 
to get at certainty and repose at last. But let that 
earnest inquirer come to the one question, of supreme 
moment, and intense personal concernment : let him 
be made to feel, by the teaching of the Blessed Spirit 
that by nature all is amiss and astray, and that some- 
thing must be done, or there remains only sinfulness 
and wretchedness : let him be brought to ask, as one 
who knows that he is asking about life and death, and 
that all other interests when compared with this are 
as dust and ashes, and that all other questions when 
compared with this are things not worth a rational 
man's wasting one thought on ; let him be brought in 
this spirit to ask what it is that he must do to be at 
peace with God : and to his unspeakable gladness he 
finds, that this question meets an answer, — ready, as 
meant for those who have not one moment to lose ; 
plain, as meant to be understood by all classes of 



Justification by Faith. 263 

intellects, the humblest as the highest ; direct, and 
explicit, and unmistakable, as given by one who 
would not mock the awakened spirit by rhetoric or 
metaphysic, when it comes in its agony to ask which 
way lies the escape from utter perdition. For when 
this earnest inquirer turns to the blessed volume of 
inspiration, he finds it recorded there, that one who 
felt what he now feels, coming to two of the first who 
preached the gospel of Jesus, asked them, with 
unutterable earnestness, the great question, "What 
must I do to be saved?" And as for them, they 
made no mystery of the matter : they told no round- 
about story : they answered the question as earnestly 
and directly as it was put to them. They said, 
" Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
saved." 

In discoursing from this text, I desire to go into no 
minute analysis of that sentiment or principle in the 
soul, or of that mental and spiritual act, which is 
meant by the injunction to believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ. I desire, by God's help, just plainly and 
simply to sketch God's way of salvation through the 
Blessed Redeemer: remembering that saying of the 
great Reformer, that the doctrine of justification by 
faith in Christ is the article of a standing or a falling 
Church j and believing that any Christian organisation 
that does not teach that doctrine, as being, along with 
the doctrine of regeneration and sanctification by the 



264 Justification by Faith. 

working of the Blessed Spirit, the great thing that it 
has to teach ; is a thing that feeds thirsting souls with 
ashes, and that shall be swept away. And it is well 
sometimes, instead of taking it for granted in public 
discourses that the people to whom they are preached 
already know and believe and understand those great 
truths which are characteristic of our holy religion, — 
and thus preaching sermons which are rather about 
the gospel, than the very gospel itself, — it is well 
sometimes to go back to the very beginning, — to take 
up the very rudiments, — and to sketch out the way of 
salvation as plainly and earnestly as if speaking to 
people who never heard of it before. And who knows 
but that God may have brought to this church this 
afternoon, some one that really has never yet plainly 
understood what he must do to be saved, and that 
honestly wishes to be told ? who can say but that it is 
ordained above, that this day shall witness his conver- 
sion to God? And who knows but this afternoon 
may have also brought here one, who thinks he stands 
right because he has taken up some wrong idea of the 
only ground on which man can be justified before his 
Maker ? and it may be written that at this time he 
shall be made to see that Christ only is the Founda- 
tion approved by God, and that every structure of hope 
or trust that is built upon any other, must go down at 
last. Surely for the sake of such : surely, too, because 
the old story can never be told too often : you, Christian 
brethren, will listen willingly to that which already you 



J testification by Faith. 265 

know so well : and which long ago came to your hearts 
with the irresistible demonstration of the Holy Spirit. 

We can make out the first tendency of the soul 
when convinced of sin, in the question which the 
keeper of that prison at Philippi put to Paul and 
Silas : " What must I do to be saved ? " When the 
soul is first made to feel that by nature and by its 
own innumerable sins it is lost and mined, the first 
feeling is, Now I must do something to escape God's 
just wrath ; and the first question is, What must 
I do % And thus in many cases the first resort of the 
awakened conscience is to external reformation of life; 
or to what have been called good w r orks. The man 
makes an effort to cut off his besetting sins, and tries 
to amend his ways. Now, of course, this will not do. 
For even if the awakened sinner were able to make 
a perfect reformation both of heart and life, so far as 
concerns the present and future, this could not cancel 
past sins. They would still remain : unaffected by 
any after-amendment : They must be answered for. 
Would you think it reasonable that one who by some 
crime had become liable to the penalty that human 
laws inflict, should expect to escape from that, by 
promising to amend his life for the future? It is 
too plain that this first resort of the awakened sinner, 
this resort to good works, will not serve : and if the 
soul be indeed convinced of sin by God's Spirit, this 
plan will bring it no peace. 



266 



J testification by Faith. 



Then when this is deeply impressed on the mind ; 
this truth, that reformation for the future, even if ir 
were possible, would leave past sins unanswered for : 
then the soul of man takes a different course; a 
course not common now in this country, but well 
known in other places, and here in other times. It 
says, In addition to doing my very best to reform my 
conduct for the future, I shall inflict on myself the 
severest punishment for my past sins. I shall deny 
myself everything that human nature loves : I shall 
accumulate on myself even-thing that human nature 
fears, and loathes, and shrinks from. I shall abide 
in a cold cell, and live on the scantiest fare, and go 
barefooi and bareheaded in the bitter weather, and 
wear a hair-shirt, and sever myself from the society 
of all I care for upon earth, and scourge myself even 
to blood morning and evening, and go a weary pil- 
grimage to some distant place by dangerous ways : 
then surely, when I have made myself suffer so 
terribly in this world, God will never let me suffer 
in the other world too ! Now, this is still the prin- 
ciple of self-righteousness and self-dependence : a man 
could have done all that although Christ had never 
died : and if doing that could save the soul, there 
was no need that Christ should die at all. This is still 
the What shall / do ? and though it be a thing, in 
this form of it, so very natural to man, that it forms 
vital part not only of the perverted Christianity of 
Rome, but of the sad superstition which over vast 



Justification by Faith, 267 



tracts of the East is accepted as a religious faith by 
millions and millions, it is a thing that is thoroughly 
false and wrong. It is not, for us men, God's way of 
salvation ; and we must set it aside. 

But this way of trying to make peace with God, 
you will say, is not known in this country ; and 
why then speak of it ? Well, let us not be so sure 
of that. Anything thoroughly congenial to human 
nature will insensibly steal in wherever there are 
human beings. Probably in two different ways, there 
is among us the tendency to vaguely believe in self- 
saving. One way in which it appears is when people 
give of their means to the support of missionary and 
philanthropic schemes, with some lurking notion that 
all this will stand to their credit at the day of judg- 
ment. And so it will : but not as merit : its value will 
be as an evidence of that saving faith from which all ac- 
ceptable obedience springs, and every deed done with- 
out which is sin. Another way in which the principle 
that lies at the foundation of penance appears among 
us, is in the case of persons who have suffered very 
greatly-: whose life has been one long disease ; or 
who have met great trials by the loss of friends or 
fortune : and who have borne all this with much 
patience and resignation. Now, you do sometimes; 
every minister does oftentimes ; hear such persons 
speaking in terms which, if they mean anything, mean 
that they cherish some ill-defined but deep-seated im- 
pression, that all this suffering endured in a present 



268 J testification by Faith. 



life is something in the nature of satisfaction for their 
sins ; and that since in this life they are called to 
suffer so much more than other people who are just 
as sinful, they surely cannot have to suffer in another 
life as well. Now brethren, I mention these two 
notions, common among Protestant Christians, — the 
work-of-merit notion, and the penance notion, — not 
to refute them : to us, with the New Testament in our 
hands, they need no refutation : but to caution you 
against them : because they steal into the mind so 
quietly, that you hardly know of their presence there, 
till on self-examination you find that they have so 
established themselves as to have been, unperceived 
by you, colouring all your ways of thinking on religion, 
and exerting an influence upon your conduct that 
startles you when you come to perceive its extent. 
And then there is a plausible way of stating a scheme 
of self-saving, or at least a scheme of salvation without 
any Saviour, which runs thus : Be sorry for the past : 
do all you can for the future : and leave all the rest 
to God. This looks plausible. For it is placing 
entire trust in God's goodness : and what more can 
you ask of a human being than just to do all he can? 
But then, though, rightly understood, it is impossible 
to trust God's goodness too much, yet that does not 
mean that God's justice and truth are blotted out : 
and His justice demands the punishment of sin ; and 
His truth is pledged to the infliction of punishment. 
There is, indeed, blessed be His Name, a way in 



J testification by Faith, 269 

which all these claims are reconciled : there is a 
higher law that comes in and cuts across the common 
law of the universe that ties suffering to transgression : 
we have all that in Christ's great Atonement : but we, 
knowing what we know, dare not hope for salvation 
through God's mere common goodness. That must 
ever be limited by His justice and truth. And then, 
the other plausible point in this notion as to the way 
to be saved, — the point, that surely man cannot be 
called to do more than just to do his very best, — this 
founds on perfect delusion. I know that it is an 
affecting thing to picture a poor human being meet- 
ing his Maker at judgment; and saying, I did my 
very best to please Thee and to make peace with 
Thee ; and what could I do more ? And doubtless, 
ignorant as we are, we can say that there have been 
those, favoured with no gospel-light, who may honestly 
urge that plea. Many a poor heathen, who testified 
to the terrible earnestness with which he reached 
after peace and pardon, by sufferings and efforts 
which we never knew, may find that though no 
human soul is saved but through Christ's great Sacri- 
fice, it is not needful to your getting the good of that 
sublime Instrumentality, that you should know all 
about what you never had the chance to know. But 
it is different with us. From childhood we have 
known the way of salvation, through faith which is in 
Jesus Christ. There is nefcher reason nor humility in 
persisting in doing for ourselves what we are not 



2 7° J testification by Faith. 

asked to do. It is not required of us to stand before 
God on the ground of our own doings. We need not 
turn that way. " Being justified by faith, we " can 
"have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus 
Christ." " There is now no condemnation to them 
which are in Christ Jesus." And we dare not alter by 
one jot or tittle the way of salvation God has revealed. 
We dare not bid you build on other foundation than 
He has laid. When you come to ask, as those 
escaping for your life, what you must do to be saved, 
there is but the one answer for you, and such as 
you. " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou 
shalt be saved ! " 

And now, what is the exact thing meant by " be- 
lieving on the Lord Jesus Christ ? " It is matter of 
the most solemn concern that we fall into no mistake 
as to this. 

Now, faith means, for one thing, the understand- 
ing's assent to evidence. To believe a truth on suffi- 
cient evidence, is to have faith in that truth. If then, 
you believe that there was such a person as Christ : 
if you believe the divinity of His mission and the 
reality of His miracles and efficacy of His work : if 
you believe, in short, speculatively, — that is to say, 
believe with your intellect, just as you do any other 
fact or truth, that Christ, the Son of God, came into 
the world to save sinners by enduring the penalty of 
transgression : this is, in a certain sense, to have faith 
in Jesus. This is, in a certain sense, to " believe on 



Justification by Faith. 2 7 1 

the Lord Jesus Christ." But. brethren, if our faith be 
no more than this, we shall not be saved. The devils 
have as much faith as that. That faith, instead of 
saving, may aggravate the doom of such as have it. 
That faith may be a condemning faith. 

And what then is saving faith? What did the 
Apostle mean, when he said so briefly to the 
Philippian jailer the memorable words? Weil, it is 
plain St Paul thought the direction he was giving 
quite clear and comprehensible. He did not think 
that the unlettered jailer was the least likely to mis- 
take his meaning. It is the fashion with some, we 
know, to describe saving faith in such an intricate 
and mysterious fashion, as tends greatly to perplex 
and bewilder the poor inquiring soul. They do so, 
no doubt, through fear that the mere speculative 
belief which I have just spoken of, should be mis- 
taken for saving faith. I believe there is not the 
least danger of that. I believe that when one is 
once got fairly off the ground of his own doings and 
deservings as the cause of salvation ; and when he is 
fairly brought to desire that he may believe in Christ 
and be saved ; there is not the least risk of his fancy- 
ing that a mere belief in the doctrine of the Atonement 
as a truth, is the faith that will save him. I believe 
that man's own common sense would revolt at any such 
notion : and I have greater confidence in God's guid- 
ing Spirit than to suffer myself to think that when He 
has once from the heart taught a man to renounce 



272 Justification by Faith. 

self, He will let him fall into any important error as 
to what is meant by faith. To believe on the Lord 
]esus Christ, in the sense that brings salvation, in- 
cludes all that speculative belief we have spoken of ; 
and a great deal more. It implies that you put your 
trust in Him for salvation. It implies that you are 
deeply convinced of sin : that you discover no method 
of escape but through a crucified -Saviour ; and that 
you go with your load of guilt and anguish, and cast 
yourself down at His feet. It implies that you re- 
nounce all self-dependence : that you abandon every 
earthly stay ; and fly to Jesus as your only stay. It 
implies that you place your entire reliance on His 
atoning blood and His spotless righteousness : that 
you unreservedly surrender your soul, with its immor- 
tal interests, into His hands ; and that believing all 
His promises, and striving to obey His commands, 
you look forward, through Him alone, to eternal 
happiness. That is saving faith. That is what Paul 
and Silas meant when they bade the jailer believe. 
That is God's way of salvation. Simple as it looks, 
we cannot do it by ourselves. We need God's Spirit 
to enable us to believe. But there is no hardship in 
that. For it is perfectly certain we shall get that 
Blessed Spirit if we do but sincerely and earnestly 
ask. 

Such is saving faith. You see that I have ex- 
plained its nature very shortly indeed. That is 
what I intended, and wished, to do. I believe 



Justification by Faith. 273 

there is nothing which tends so much to bewilder and 
discourage an anxious awakened soul, as anything 
like going into the metaphysics of faith : trying to 
define the respective provinces of head and heart in 
it, and the like. I should have regretted, and I 
should have blamed myself much, if I thought that in 
speaking to-day to dying men about the most import- 
ant thing concerning which it is possible to speak to 
them, I had spoken otherwise than in the very 
plainest words I could find. I should wish that if 
there be one here, who up to this day really never 
knew what was meant by saving faith in Jesus, — I 
should wish that such a one may carry away with 
him a clear idea : and may be well assured that 
God has set out no way of salvation that is so misty 
and perplexed, that not one man in a hundred, of 
plain people, could plainly tell you what it means. I 
cannot but think that many otherwise good religious 
books are not free from great blame, for the long ? 
involved, mystic descriptions which they give of 
faith. Think, When you are telling of the re- 
medy to the fast-dying man, is not the shortest and 
clearest way the best ? The Apostles, you see, 
thought the briefest way of answering the awakened 
sinner, the right way. " Believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ : 91 that was all. To every inquiring soul let the 
same be said : Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
pray for the Holy Spirit to help you so to believe. 

And oh, inquiring soul, if even yet, though you ear- 

s 



274 j2istificatiou by Faith. 



nestly desire to do so. you do not clearly under- 
stand what is mean: by saving faith: just go and 
tell God that Tell God that : and He will make 
it plain. 

Now. does it come across the mind of any one here, 
that all this is too easy? Does it seem too cheap a way 
of escaping the punishment due to perhaps a whole 
life of sin, just to repent towards God and to believe 
on Christ ? Perhaps that has crossed your mind. It 
bas occurred, we know, to multitudes of other people. 
And, perplexed by the freeness of the gospel salva- 
tion: feeling as if it ought to be more difficult to be 
saved; they have devised penances here, and expia- 
tory suffering for a time in the other world. But we 
can say no more, than that the way of salvation of 
which we have thought a: this time, is God's way. It 
is plainly set out in God's Word. If this be not true, 
we cannot be sure that anything taught there is true. 
The gospel salvation is offered without price. It is a 
free salvation : it was bought with Christ's doing and 
suffering alone. Yet surely it can only be if our eyes 
are without spiritual discernment, that the conditions 
needful on our part will seem light. Repentance and 
faith, though the unseen exertion of the invisible soul, 
make a great work after all. It is not a little thing to 
go through, truly to repent. And the natural temporal 
consequences of sin are not escaped by believing on 
Christ. In ail ordinary cases, they will come. And 



Justification by Faith. 



275 



no one half so readily as the penitent sinner him- 
self will confess that they come justly. There 
can be no greater delusion than to fancy that the 
gospel salvation, with all its freeness, tends to make 
sin a light or small matter. Ignorant of the very 
alphabet of the gospel the soul must be that fancies 
that! 

And does it cross your mind too, that if all that has 
been said be right, then you have just to believe : and 
afterwards you may go away and do what you like, 
sin just as you like ; and even if you have not been 
forgiven for everything once for all, you know where 
the Fountain is always ready to wash you clean, — or 
to clear you at least from the risk of damnation ? 
Well, some have thought that too ; and acted upon the 
belief. But trust me when I say that no heathen, no 
devil, was ever more decidedly outside the kingdom of 
God, than these ! For if you have truly believed on 
Christ, one thing will follow certainly : There is not 
time, to-day, to explain how it follows, but it does 
follow 1 that in all your life, every moment of it, you 
will set yourself to avoid sin as you never did before. 
N conviction that sin brings damnation, can make 
you half so zealous to shun it, as the sight of it gained 
by believing on Christ : the sight of it as inexpressibly 
evil in itself, as unutterably ungrateful to God, as the 
cause of unutterable agony to your Saviour. Once 
have the good hope through grace that your sins are 
forgiven : and it will become your work and prayer 



276 J testification by Faith. 

to be clear of sin in heart and life. You will shun 
it, not because you are afraid it will bring you to 
hell ; but because your whole renewed and sanc- 
tified nature will by necessity constrain you so to 

do. 



XVIII. 



THE WAY TO ZION. 



" They shall ask the way to Zion, with their faces thitherward.' 5 — 



'HEY point us, the words of this prophecy, to 



JL two great events : one of them past and gone; 
the other yet to be. Looking onward, from that 
long-departed day on which this text was first written, 
the prophet's eye, no doubt, rested first on the de- 
struction of that Babylon which was "the glory of 
the Chaldee's excellency," and the return from cap- 
tivity of the exiled Jews. But, even as he looked 
upon a prospect whieh to the patriotic Jew must 
have been a bright one, he saw, looming far away in 
the depth of future ages, another, brighter by far : 
and before the ink had dried upon the page whereon 
the Holy Spirit was writing by his hand some part of 
the future history of the world, the prophet must 
have been aware that there was further meaning in 
the words he was tracing ; and that their sense was 
not exhausted when you thought only of this first 
return of the captive Jews to their native land. Tor 



Jer. L 5. 




The Way to Zion. 



the prophecy seems to apply no less to the downfall 
of a Babylon that had yet to be founded and to 
flourish ; that mystic Babylon which in following ages 
should exalt itself against the Lord : and to that 
restoration of Abraham's scattered children to the 
land of promise, which shall come when the consum- 
mation of all things is at hand. I need not say to 
such as know something of the prophecies of Scrip- 
ture, that it is no unusual thing for them to bear this 
double sense, and to point to the like twofold fulfil- 
ment : nor is it necessary to do more than remind 
you that it not unfrequently happens that a prophecy 
may contain a statement of circumstances which will 
be no more than partially fulfilled in the first event to 
which it refers ; and which must wait its full comple- 
tion in the second. 

And thus it is that we, living now, live in an age 
which lies between the two events to each of w T hich 
the prophecy in the text refers. Once already has 
the world been startled by the crowds of weeping yet 
joyful wanderers, who, with their faces turned towards 
Zion, asked for direction on the way. Once have the 
paths that led from Babylon towards Jerusalem been 
thronged by eager multitudes, hastening from slavery 
and exile to freedom and home. The feet are dust 
that have trodden those ways already ; and the voices 
are hushed, w r ith the hush of ages, whose utterances 
first made the prophet's words come true. But the 
day is yet to come, when, stirred by one impulse, the 



The Way to Zion. 279 

innumerable families of the scattered Jews shall arise 
from their places of sojourn in every land and among 
every race. Looking at last on Him Whom they 
pierced ; mourning at last in heart-felt penitence over 
their rejection of Him Who died for them ; we seem 
to see them setting out, in many companies, winding 
along many different ways, yet all converging towards 
Jerusalem as streams meet in the ocean : and fearful 
lest they should mistake their way, anxious not to 
waste a step, they ask earnestly of those they meet, 
as to the path which is the right one. " They shall 
ask the way to Zion, with their faces thitherward. " 

But I purpose, in this discourse, to regard the text, 
neither in its relation to that return of the Jews which 
is past, nor in its relation to that other which is yet 
to come. In all their history, the Jews were a people 
whose lot illustrates and typifies the history of the 
Christian Church, and of individual members of it : 
and I am about to apply the text, as it may well be 
applied, to the case of Christian pilgrims, escaping from 
bondage worse than Egyptian or Babylonian, towards 
the better Jerusalem above. I believe that we may 
find much instruction in the text, looked at in this 
way. And I believe, too, that we shall find it is fulfilled 
most strikingly, in the history of all true believers. 

Now, the thing to which I wish specially to direct 
your attention in discoursing from the text, is that 
suggested by the latter words of it. "They shall ask 
the way to Zion, with their faces thitherward : " Mark 



28o 



The Way to Zion. 



these closing words. They shall not merely ask the 
way : not merely ask for direction in the road that 
leads to Heaven : there is something more peculiar 
in what they do : They ask the way, but they ask it 
" with their faces thitherward." And there are three 
different thoughts which these words suggest, to each 
of which I desire to direct your thoughts. 

The most obvious thought suggested, is this : that 
there seems something like a contradiction between 
the two parts of the text. They ask the way, these 
people ; but they ask it with their faces Zionward : 
It seems as though implied that they ask their way 
when they know it already, and when therefore they 
do not need to ask it. And so in the Christian life 
too : there seems in it one great point of difference 
from the ordinary way of the world. We all know 
that in this world's common business, seeking implies 
that the thing sought yet remains to be found : once 
the thing is found, the search is ended. The man 
sought diligently, — hunted up and down through the 
wilderness,— till he found his lost sheep : but once it 
was found, he laid it on his shoulders and bore it 
home, and sought for it no more. The woman 
lighted her candle and swept the house, and sought 
diligently till she found her lost piece of money : but 
once it was found, she gathered her neighbours to 
rejoice with her, and sought for it no more. But it 
should seem that as the Jew followed his path to the 



The Way to Zion. 



281 



earthly Canaan, and as the believer follows his to the 
Canaan above, there may be such a thing as seeking, 
after rinding. " They shall ask the way to Zion, with 
their faces thitherward : " They shall inquire diligently 
as to the way, though they are treading it right, and 
though they have been treading it long : For so fear- 
ful would they be lest they should deviate by ever so 
little from the true road, that at every turning they 
would be anxious to make sure that the turn they had 
taken was the right one : and wherever the road 
parted into two ways, one to right and one to left, 
even though nearly sure that the one to the right was 
the way to Zion, they would make assurance doubly 
sure : they would make quite positive that it should 
never happen at any future time that they should 
find themselves miles out of the right track, — and 
should have to say to themselves, Well, if we had just 
thought of asking the way at such a turn where we 
were not quite sure of it, we should have been saved 
many a weary foot, and many a useless one. And 
not only so. Not only would the Jew, journeying 
towards Zion, wash to cut off the faintest chance of 
straying from the path, by asking twenty times when 
it was needless, rather than miss one time when it 
was necessary : but another reason would come in 
with gentle weight, to prompt such' questioning as 
that. For not only would his elated heart constrain 
him to reveal his joyful errand to all who met him : 
not only would he w r eary to let all men know how 



282 



The Way to Zion. 



hopeful and thankful he was : Not only that; but so 
pleasantly would fall upon the ear the direction to 
the Golden City, that he would like to hear it ie- 
peated, even after he could do without it. We like 
to speak, till we grow sophisticated by hard experi- 
ence, even to strangers, of things uppermost in our 
own hearts : we like to speak of them, though we 
have spoken of them a hundred times before : and 
the Israelite would listen, as to a strain of music the 
dearer because it was old, the better loved because it 
was remembered so well and because it had been 
heard so often, — to the story of whereaway it lay, 
his own true Home ; the beautiful city where his 
fathers had lived and lay sleeping. 

So with the Christian pilgrim : even so. The 
prophecy is fulfilled in his case too, that he should 
ask the way to Zion, with his face thitherward. 
Though he know the heavenward way, he likes to 
hear more of it : likes to hear more of it, in order 
that he may make doubly sure he is not straying 
from it : likes to hear more of it, just because any 
mention of it is a pleasant thing. No matter how 
advanced a Christian may be in the divine life, he 
never gets beyond being interested in the earliest 
and most fundamental truths and doctrines. He is 
just as delighted to hear the old "Believe on the 
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved," as if he 
had never heard it before. Give us the old story, 
every day ! Thai counsel he never seems to get 



The Way to Zion. 283 

beyond the need of : that counsel he can never 
hear too often. Why, we have before our eyes 
a daily proof that the Christian can still go on seek- 
ing though he have already found. What do you 
come to church to hear preached? Just the gospel. 
Just the old story : an old story, though ever Good 
News. You know before you come here, the sum of 
all the preacher can say to you. Come to the 
Saviour : Trust Him, and obey Him ; is the sum of 
the message to the most advanced as well as to the 
youngest believer. And the message is as appro- 
priate in the one case as in the other. Those among 
you who for many a day have faithfully walked the 
way of life, can yet listen with pleasure to the voice 
that tells you where it lies ; and bear patiently with 
the friend who would point out to you the path 
which you know perhaps better than he does. 

Perhaps we have all sometimes fancied, that it is 
almost needless for a confirmed and established 
Christian to come to church week by week : need- 
less, in any case, that he should listen to the sermon. 
Why, we might say, he is only hearing what he 
already knows : listening to reasons why he should 
do what he has already done. The difficulty is 
theoretical : it vanishes in practice. It is just the 
most advanced in the life of faith : just one who has 
been the means of bringing many to the Saviour; 
that we have seen listen with the liveliest interest 
to plain truth, known well, and known long, O 



284 The Way to Zion. 



brethren, it is not merely the dry presentment of 
information, when you speak of the heavenward way 
to the human being who owns himself a pilgrim on 
the earth. It is not simply the conveying to him of 
a piece of information, which it may be very proper, 
or even very necessary, for him to possess. It is 
rather as if you sat down by the exile's side, and 
talked to him in sympathising tones of the ways that 
lead to his never-forgotten home : it is rather as 
though you kindly conversed with one parted for 
long years from all he loves, of the dear faces, aging 
now, that used to surround the far-away fireside, and 
of the pleasant voices perhaps to be heard no more. 
It is not that your words convey any new knowledge 
that was not previously possessed that makes them be 
listened to with such delighted interest. It is just 
that the subject you speak of is so pleasant, that the 
exile would talk about it all day long. 

The second thought suggested by the prophecy 
that the Christian pilgrim should ask the way to 
Zion with his face thitherward, is this: That the 
peculiar manner in which he asks the question is 
strong proof of his sincerity in asking it: strong 
proof that he really means to follow the path which 
he asks you to point out to him : because it shows 
he is making all the use he can of the information he 
has got already. 

We might imagine such a thing as a man asking the 



The Way to Zion. 



285 



way to Zion, with no real wish to set forth on that 
way. We might imagine such a thing as a man's 
conscience refusing to give him rest, unless he should 
see to it which way lies the road to Heaven : while 
at the same time in his heart he would be very 
pleased if he could just manage so that he might 
have it in his power to say, Well, I really tried my 
best to find out the way to Heaven ; — I really sought 
the way to Zion, but I could not find it : and so of 
course I am not to blame if I do not follow it. But 
in the case of a person who asked the way to Zion in 
that spirit, we should not look to find him asking it 
"with his face thitherward." The fact, of asking the 
way, but asking it with the face Zionward, would be 
proof that though the man wanted more information 
as to his way, he was yet making the best of the 
information he had already : and although he might 
wish to find a shorter way, an easier way, a pleasanter 
way, he was yet pushing on steadily in that way which 
his present knowledge pointed out as one at all events 
in the direction of Zion ; which was one way to Zion, 
if not the way, — that is, the best way. Now, if you 
found a man seeking earnestly for more instruction 
as to his way, but at the same time making the best 
of what he knows ; you would say that man really 
wanted to get to the place he was asking the way to. 
But if you find one asking his way towards any place, 
and at the same time sitting still and doing nothing ; 
or if you find him walking stoutly on in a direction 



2S6 



The Way to Zion. 



he knows is not the way, and which you have ground 
to suspect he has a strong impression is just the 
opposite of the way; you would not believe that 
man honestly wanted to reach the place he talked 
of. You would judge that for some reason which he 
knew best himself, he wished to appear anxious to go 
in one direction, while his inclination and his heart 
were running in a very different one. But see the 
bearing on the question of his true intention, of the 
description of the Christian pilgrim in the text. He 
does not ask his way, and turn his back upon the 
place. He asks the way to Zion, as you meet him 
on his road. He is in some perplexity : Just here 
there are two paths to choose between : he may go 
to left or right : but when you look at him, you see 
that about him which makes you feel he asks in good 
faith : his face is in the right direction : you are well 
assured that he does not want to get credit for the 
will to take the difficult way which is right, yet to 
have the pleasure of taking the easy way which is 
wrong. Now, consider : Is there not among pro- 
fessing Christians too much of this last : of asking the 
way to Zion, with a face that looks another way, wish- 
fully? It has already been said, that by coming to 
church on the Lord's day, we do as it were ask the 
way to Zion : Every time we open our Bibles we ask 
the way to Zion : for it is asking the w r ay to Heaven 
to ask what is the right thing for us to do in the next 
little worldly business : and each time we go of our 



The Way to Zion. 



2S7 



own act and listen to the preached gospel, we are 
inquiring what we must do to be saved. But is it 
not true that many of those who ask that great 
question, have no firm purpose of acting upon the 
answer they get to it ? They ask it merely for form's 
sake, and to make a decent appearance : They do not 
honestly want to follow the path they ask for : They 
ask the way to Heaven, but they ask it with their 
faces turned towards the world, and their hearts 
looking thitherwards too. And what wonder, then, 
if all their inquiries lead to no practical result, when 
in truth they know they did not wish they should ? 
A great many of the hearers in a great many churches, 
when they hear the text read, and prepare to listen to 
the sermon, have not the least intention that their 
life, for the next week, shall be guided by the 
counsels the sermon is to contain. I know, of 
course, that to take one step in the road towards 
Heaven, is what the unconverted man of himself 
cannot do : A power from above must be given him 
before he can do that: But there is one thing he can 
do: he can at all events turn his face thitherward; 
and so give proof that he honestly desires the power 
to turn his steps. Every unconverted person knows 
that though he be not able independently to work 
out his own salvation, there are yet certain things 
which he ought to do to put himself in salvation's 
way : and to do these is as it were that turning of the 
face in the direction of Zion, which vouches for the 



288 



The Way to Zion. 



sincerity, the earnestness, of the question as to the 
path that leads there. 

You profess, my hearers, by your weekly appear- 
ance here, if by nothing else you say or do, — that you 
wish for guidance in the way of salvation : You ask 
the way to Zion. Do you ask it with your faces 
thitherward ? Do you honestly try to follow the 
path that is pointed out to you? You are told to 
come to Christ, and believe on Him : Now do you 
earnestly seek, by the help of the Holy Spirit, to do 
that ? You are told to mortify and subdue the sinful- 
ness that dwells in you : Now do you allow unkind, 
unjust, impure thoughts and affections to readily enter 
into your heart? You are counselled to set your 
affection on things above : do you go away home, 
and from Monday morning till Saturday night suffer 
your whole thoughts to run upon this world ? You 
are counselled to pray always, to pray everywhere : 
Do you set yourself, with real intention, so to 
do? Because if you do not give proof of the 
sincerity with which you seek for direction in the 
way to Zion, by following out the direction you 
receive to the very utmost of your power : If you 
come and ask the way to Heaven, and then turn 
your face in what you know is just the opposite 
direction : you are showing that your appearance 
here is no more than a compliance with the general 
custom ; and that your asking the way to Zion is a 
mere hollow pretence. Turn your face thither ; and 



The Way to Zion. 



289 



then we shall believe you are in earnest when you 
ask the way. But do not, like so many, dishearten 
the preacher by practically asking him a question, to 
whose answer you hardly listen, and for whose answer 
you do not care. 

The third thought suggested by these words to 
which we have so often referred, which describe the 
Christian pilgrim as asking the way to Zion with his 
face thitherward, is this : that the believer, in advanc- 
ing on his heavenward course, is rather attracted by 
the hope of heaven, than driven by the fear of perdi- 
tion. He is travelling towards Zion ; and his view is 
bent steadfastly upon the distant towers of that glori- 
ous city. His face is thitherward : that is the prospect 
that fills his eye : He does not walk towards heaven 
as it were backwards, with his face turned towards the 
destruction he is escaping from, and ins mind quite 
occupied by that, and the dread of that the great 
motive that prompts him to exertion and that speeds 
him on his way. No . it seems as though it were 
gently implied, yet decidedly, in my text, that the 
Christian's motive is before him and not behind : that 
it is hope and love rather than horror or fear : that the 
thought uppermost in his mind, day by day, as he 
goes on through this wilderness, is not that of the 
outer darkness, the worm that never dies, the fire that 
is never quenched, — but rather of the bright and 
peaceful home where are his treasure and his heart: 

T 



The Way to Zion. 



and that He thinks of God Almighty not as the angry 
Judge and the inflexible Punisher, but rather as the 
God and Father of our kind and gracious Saviour, 
Whose Name is Love. Far be it from me to say that 
the dread of future woe is not a motive which ought 
to tell powerfully and awakeningly upon the heart of 
every man : I know it is a motive strongly urged in 
Scripture ; and never urged more solemnly than by 
our Blessed Saviour Himself : Never was preacher 
that spoke more plainly of the wrath to come, than the 
kind compassionate Redeemer : I know that the first 
attempts to awaken the sleeping soul and startle the 
careless sinner, must generally be by an appeal to his 
fears. But though that may serve for the first awaken- 
ing : though that may be the first thing that will bring 
the unconverted man to think of his state : still it is 
when the love of the Saviour is in some degree under- 
stood, that the soul heartily goes to Him, drawn by 
the cords of love, the bands of a man. And as the 
believer day by day journeys towards his Father's 
house above : as, forgetting those things which are 
behind, he reaches forth unto those things which are 
before : as, leaving the principles of the gospel of 
Christ, he goes on unto perfection : surely it is not 
with the shuddering terror of one who hears behind 
him the roaring of the flames of Sodom, but rather 
with the onward bent of one hastening towards the 
dear fireside at home. He speeds on the way to 
Zion, and his face is thitherward : there is not one 



The IV ay to Zion. 



291 



hasty startled look behind him, not one hurried 
glance backwards on that ruin from which he feels 
that through Christ he is safe for ever : But it is all 
earnest onlooking : striving forward because of what 
lies before; reaching forth, if not always for glory 
honour and immortality, at least for rest, for safety, 
for freedom from sin. I make bold to say, that in 
the best Christian people I have ever known, the fear 
of hell was no appreciable motive at all : It did not 
weigh with them a feather ! The love of Christ con- 
strained them : the hope of glory, and all that means 
which means everything, effectually drew them on. 
They feared sin, because it is ungrateful and evil : not 
because they were afraid it would be their ruin : they 
knew it could never be that It was with them as 
Jeremiah said : They journeyed on the way to Zion ? 
" with their faces thitherward." 

Everybody can understand that there are motives 
which draw, and motives which drive : and that very 
opposite motives may make one do the same thing. 
You have read of the man in a northern country, 
going home from the town one evening : driving his 
sledge, under the keen starlight, along the rude track 
across the waste : and suddenly hearing the distant 
howling that showed a band of wolves were on his 
track. You have read of the desperate speed with 
which he hurried on, as the cry behind him, always 
louder and louder, showed that the savage beasts were 



2g2 



The Way to Zicn. 



gaining on him : and how at last he reache i a place of 
safety just as the gaunt forms and fierce eyes came in 
sight close behind him. Now, that man was going 
home: and he got home safe, too: but it would 
always be a terrible remembrance, that awful journey. 
But, think of him going homewards, on a pleasant 
summer day. after a time of absence ; drawn only by 
the strong desire to see again the old familiar faces, 
so ven- dear : drawn by the home before, not driven 
by wild beasts behind him. He might not. indeed, 
press on with the same frantic effort, inspired by the 
bare instinct of self-preservation : but surely with pur- 
pose as earnest, and with as little thought of turning 
back. And how much happier the journey of the 
traveller this way drawn, than that way driven ! 
Surely. Christian friends, it is not wrong that we 
should wish, and humbly ask, that going on, every 
day (as we trust), to the Home where Christ is. we 
be effectually drawn by the good hope through grace. 
We will forget the things that are behind : We will 
reach forth unto those that are before. Wearied; we 
look on for rest. Perplexed, for full light. Anxious, 
for perfect peace. Sinful, for the pure heart. Sor- 
rowful, for everlasting joy. Absent from cur Saviour, 
to see His Blessed Face. 



XIX, 



THIS LIFE AND THE NEXT SOBERLY 
WEIGHED. 

" I would not live alway." — Job vii. 16. 

IT was the Devil that said it, "All that a man hath 
he will give for his life : " but the father of lies 
for once said what has a strong likeness to truth. In 
the great majority of cases, men cling to this pleasing 
anxious being, with its human interest : with its tried, 
familiar joys and woes : and they shrink, with an 
instinctive horror, from that relentless messenger who 
parts them from all they have seen and felt, and 
launches the unclothed spirit upon an untried exist- 
ence and unknown scenes. If the merely worldly 
man sometimes repines at the ills that flesh is heir to, 
— sometimes feels as though he could willingly creep 
into a quiet grave, and give up the wearisome round 
of life, — he yet cannot but apprehend that elsewhere 
there may be something infinitely worse. And the 
ordinary Christian even, who has a blessed hope 
beyond the grave, cannot but feel, especially in his 



294 This Life and the Next 



less cheerful moments, that the valley he must tra- 
verse is dark, and the Jordan he must cross is deep : 
that after all is said, it remains a very serious thing 
to die. 

Yet, strong as is the natural leaning to life, and just 
this life, many a human being has been able to tear him- 
self away from it. Mere satiety, and weariness of every- 
thing, have nerved to quit it by one desperate leap. 
Some, like the afflicted patriarch whose words form my 
text, have felt the love of life die out, under the bitter 
pressure of pain, and the desolation of bereavement. 
Some, yet more wretched, urged by the stings of guilt 
that could not be forgot, dogged by unendurable 
recollection, and met in the face everywhere by black 
despair, have rushed madly from this place of their 
misery and sin ; as with the wish in their heart, as 
with the cry on their lips, Anywhere, anywhere, out of 
the world ! 

It is, I firmly believe, not merely charitable but 
just, to believe that such as pass from this life by their 
own act, must have been so maddened by misery as 
to be in no measure responsible ; and so to hold them 
as not the guiltiest but the most unhappy of our poor 
sinful race.* As for the wish, hasty, impatient, not 

* The writer has had several opportunities of remarking how 
much harm is done by an intemperate and unreasonable fashion 
of speaking on this sorrowful subject. He has found that need- 
less pain is given to survivors among the humble class in Scot- 
land, by a foolish passage on the matter in Blair's Grave, 



Soberly Weighed. 



295 



quite sincere, that sometimes breaks forth from great 
sufferers, saying like the fainting Elijah, <: It is better 
for me to die than to live," — that deserves just the con- 
demnation due to all wishes that are hasty, impatient, 
presumptuous, and not quite sincere. But it is some- 
thing quite different from that, that breathes through 
the memorable words, "To me to live is Christ, 
and to die is gain." There is nothing but what a 
humble Christian might utter to-day, though our 
Saviour were present to hear him, in these words of 
Job, uttered not in impatient despair, but in firm faith 
and simple submission. They are but the expression 
of the creature's acquiescence in what he knows to be 
the Creator's will. And only by God's grace can we, 
whose hearts so readily cleave to the dust, turn 
heartily and without regret from the seen to the 
unseen. We cannot say but what we are needed heie 
a while : Most of us feel that there are those who 
could not well do without us : And for their sakes. no 
doubt, to most, this life is dear. But if we had to 
think only of ourselves, "This is not our rest." 
Soberly, and calmly, we would not live alway. There 
is something other, something better, needed. By the 
make of our being, we never shall be right, till the 
restless heart rests in the presence of the Blessed 
Redeemer. There are things to go through before 
that can be : things from which human nature shrinks : 
but it is well worth while. For through the gate of 
death, we pass into the life immortal. 



296 This Life and the Next 



Let us try, by God's help, soberly to look into this 
matter ; and weigh the reasons which go to prove that 
Heaven is better than earth \ and so that the believer 
should not wish to live always here. The reasons are 
plain, and good : May the blessed Spirit bring them 
home to us ! There is no fear at all that they will 
impress us too much. 

Think, first, of the unsatisfactoriness of this life, and 
of its many sorrows and cares. We shall not say so 
much of the unsatisfactoriness : because no one will 
quite take that in, unless through a rare experience 
like that of Solomon, and of other very great and rich 
folk, who learned the vanity of this life by being 
allowed to get all it could yield them, — and then 
rinding that it would not do. . But we all know how 
much pain, anxiety, disappointment, bereavement, 
there are in this life, — even in the life of the best 
Christian. All things, we know, work together for 
good to those who love God : but this does not imply 
that the Christian shall not bear his part in the ills 
that flesh is heir to. All things work together for his 
ultimate good, not necessarily for his immediate hap- 
piness : and it may be that the darkest days of his life 
are those which see him make the greatest advance 
in his journey towards Heaven. You know that shade 
and sunshine, storm and calm, day and night, summer 
and winter, all do their part to root and strengthen 
some great tree on which their successive influences 



Soberly Weighed. 297 



are brought to bear : and so with the various influ- 
ences under which the Christian's character ripens for 
the better world. It is his great blessing to advance 
through life with a soul which God has so gifted, that 
it will extract good from the whole of what happens 
to it. Nothing can ever do the believer real ill ; 
everything that befals him is co-operating with every- 
thing else for his best good : but then, many of these 
things may be very dark.and painful at the time, — like 
the drear December night to the tree battling with its 
storms. I have heard it said, as though in reproach, 
that the real reason why we are all sometimes so 
anxious as we look on to the future, is, that we can- 
not trust God; cannot leave ourselves implicitly in 
His hands, sure that He will order all things well. 
But surely this is not stating the case fairly. If we 
have given ourselves to our Saviour's charge, we have 
no doubt at all that God will order all things for our 
true good : but the doubt and fear come in, that 
He may judge some things to be for our true good 
which will be terribly painful, terribly mortifying and 
humbling, yea, utterly heart-breaking ■ and the very 
thing that weighs sometimes upon us heavily, is just 
that we can so thoroughly trust God to send us what 
is good for us, truly good for us, however sore the dis- 
cipline may be. It gives you no assurance at all that 
your worldly lot shall be a prosperous and happy one, 
to be assured that it is all ordered by your Saviour, 
and ordered in kindness and wisdom. For perhaps, 



298 This Life and the Next 

God only knows, — perhaps He may see that you need 
the discipline of much tribulation : and if sorrow be 
needful to you, then, if God loves you, sorrow will be 
sent Now, precious discipline as sorrow is, it never 
can be pleasant. And though (by God's grace) re- 
signed, humble, and thankful under it, it will be a 
glad thing to be done with it for ever. But not on 
this side of time can that be ! Not the best believer, 
though beloved of God, can be sure of freedom from 
a host of lesser and greater troubles, here. It is not 
here that the sorrowful lines shall be smoothed out 
from the face, nor the anxious look taken from the 
eyes. Wherefore we say, with the patient patriarch, 
what he says in this text. I do not know if the day 
will ever come to us, when, with healthful and com- 
posed spirit, we shall say, Now, this is the time to go : 
though but the other day I heard it said, calmly and 
devoutly, and in simple submission to God's will. 
But in this hour, composedly looking onward, to a 
peaceful and happy Heaven, we say it, We "would 
not live alway." 

A second trouble, beyond that of sorrow, which 
will never be done with in this life, comes of sin with- 
in us and around us : of the warfare of the flesh 
against the spirit : of remaining corruption, never 
entirely mortified. And here is not merely a trouble, 
in the sense of something that causes suffering, — but 
likewise in the sense of that which causes great 



Soberly Weighed. 299 



danger, great spiritual danger. I am sure we have all 
felt, all who have lost those very dear, even in the 
great bitterness of fresh bereavement, what a grand 
thing is a completed life : fairly completed in the 
odour of sanctity, and in the good hope through 
grace : and now beyond all possibility of failure, and 
disappointment, of sin or shame. We are not safe, 
till we are in Heaven. Let him that standeth take 
heed lest he fall. Oh the sorrowful wrecks there have 
been ! Think of St Paul, after he had preached to 
others, after all he had done and suffered for his 
Master, fearing lest he should be a cast-away ! Where- 
fore, let our resolution be like his: to mortify the 
flesh with the affections and lusts : to keep under the 
evil nature and bring it into subjection. There is 
nothing more certain than this : that though when in 
our right mind, and in our best state of feeling, we see 
plainly that the ways of godliness and purity and truth 
are those of pleasantness and peace ; yet times come 
when we cease to be our true selves, — or in any case 
our better selves : Times come when sinful tendencies 
gather strength, and push us from the right way: 
when we find within ourselves a foolishness, a self- 
conceit, a wickedness, which we thought we had been 
done with, — but which we discover with shame are 
yet unmortified and unsubdued. We discover that it 
will not do to discern, with whatever degree of shame,, 
that once we were very foolish and very bad and 
showed ourselves so : God humbles our pride yet 



300 This Life and the Next 



deeper in the dust by making us feel in bitterness that 
we are very foolish and very bad still. And while 
there is so much that is evil within us, no doubt it is 
appointed us to live in a world of many temptations : 
full of occasions to stumble and turn aside ; full of en- 
ticements congenial to the evil within ; full of testing 
times that will bring out the foolishness, the wraths 
and envies, the self-conceits, all the bitterness of sin 
that is latent in the heart, and that will spring into 
manifest being with opportunity. Now it is a miser- 
able thing to think that the day never dawns on which 
each of us may not make a fool of himself in every- 
body's eyes but his own : and more miserable to think, 
as we ought to think, of possible depths of danger, 
sorrow, shame. And the best intentions, — yes, and 
the most earnest prayers, will not make quite sure 
that such shall not be. You have been angry with 
yourselves for your undevout spirit and wandering 
thoughts in your prayers, — yet felt you could not stop 
these evil things. You know you ought to make up 
your mind, and far more manfully stand by your 
Christian profession and act up to your Christian con- 
victions : but you find you cannot do this as you 
desire. Every now and then, wakening up from the 
spiritual lethargy that steals upon us, you recognise 
with a start how far you are, in twenty ways, from 
being what you ought to be, — in temper, speech, 
aspiration, conduct : you determine to be better, — or 
to see about being better : then you go on just the 



Soberly Weighed. 



301 



same. No doubt at all, in all truly honest endeavours 
to put down sin and reach after greater holiness, the 
Blessed Spirit helps : but still, unless with those in 
whom wonderful natural goodness and purity go along 
with very special measures of God's grace, there is a 
weary conflict : a long-lasting one : often mortifying 
and humbling defeat. Sometimes, when we have 
clone our very best, it pleases God to let us fail, and 
be disappointed, at our communion seasons, and our 
common worship in His house : no doubt all this 
comes sometimes of physical reasons : yet the dis- 
appointment, the blank, sorrowful disheartening, are 
not the less. Spiritually, as otherwise, we need 
much taking-down ; and so we get it : Not by any 
other means can we be clothed with humility as we 
ought to be. And doubtless it is a good fight, the 
tight of faith. Yet it is painful, and perilous : and we 
shall be very thankful when the strife is well past, and 
only peace and purity remain. Wherefore, though 
with a fainting heart sometimes in the thought of the 
dark river that runs between us and it, we declare 
plainly that we seek a country, which is not on this 
side the grave. 

A third reason why we may humbly acquiesce in 
God's purpose to call us in His time from this life ; is, 
that our knowledge and powers, here confined and 
imperfect, must be glorified and perfected in a higher 
state of being. 



502 This Life and the Next 

You can easily see that in thinking of such a sub- 
ject as mine this morning in a short discourse, it is 
but a mere sketch of great part of the subject which is 
possible. And though there is no limit to what may 
be said under this head, either by the philosophic 
theologian or the simple expounder of that which is 
revealed. I pass it by as of lesser real interest to most 
of us ; and as not unlikely to lead into tracks of specu- 
lation more curious than useful. To say the truth. I 
do not believe that, unless to exceptional minds here 
and there, there is much attraction in these views of 
the better life, even if we had more reliable informa- 
tion than we have as to their soundness. And I go 
on to what is certain, and to what every one can 
understand, when I say that a fourth reason why the 
believer would not live always in this world, is that 
while here he is separated, absolutely and completely, 
from many who are very dear. And Heaven is the 
only place, now, where all that are dear to most of us 
can ever meet together. You may go to them, but 
they will not return to you. 

Xow. I do not know a matter as to which it is more 
difficult to speak fittingly. We have arrived at a field 
of thought which has been beaten bare by speakers 
and writers beyond number : and in most memories 
and hearts there are such solemn remembrances and 
feelings latent, yet capable of being awakened by even 
a rude and unskilful touch, that the most unworthy 
means, the poorest collection of stock phrases about 



Soberly Weighed. 



303 



the awful reality of the separation made by death, 
and about the hope of meeting where there is no 
parting, will in many cases touch as no wisdom or 
eloquence could on another topic : touch in a fashion 
and a degree for which the rude meddler with the 
most sacred and intimate concerns of our hearts is 
entitled to not the slightest credit. I wish to avoid 
all that; and to speak calmly and soberly on this 
solemn subject. 

Doubtless you know, that such as have seen those 
very dear die, pass through very varied experience : 
sometimes rebelliously refusing to acquiese in God's 
will : sometimes able to flee to that refuge of the 
heart-broken in all ages, the simple Thy will be 
done : sometimes feeling so deeply how holy, happy, 
and safe with Jesus those are who are gone, that they 
would not wish them back as;ain. So with the feeling 
of the bereaved as to themselves. Xo doubt the 
sense has sometimes been, that they could willingly 
and instantly turn the back upon this life, if they 
might only see the face and hear the voice again 
whose removal took all the sunshine from this world : 
perhaps the very little face that made a blank so 
large, — and you never knew how much it was in the 
house, till it was gone. Sometimes, moiling away in 
the tasks of life, faith grows so weak and the heart so 
worldly, that there is little real sense of the happy 
being of those gone, or wish to meet them more. 
But, even after the first grief has passed away, times 



304 



This Life and the Next 



come to many wherein it is felt that the ties are not 
here, but in the other world : wheiein this is calmly 
felt, by hearts in which the capacity of strong emotion 
is out-worn. Some may remember that beautiful 
account given us by a writer little used to such 
descriptions, of an aged woman who in the last days 
of her life was so anxious to see again a little child 
many years taken, that she was only eager to be gone: 
never thinking of how the little face might be changed 
in all these years ; nor how wise and mighty the little 
child might by this time have grown in the wisdom of 
a better world. And though I shrink from speaking 
publicly of what I have come to know in my minis- 
terial duty, it cannot do harm to any now to say, that 
I w r ell knew a very aged man, a man burdened with a 
life of nearly a century, who very many times told me 
how he had outlived all he cared for : that they were 
all gone, the brothers and sisters of youth, as he 
humbly trusted, to the Father's House above, and he 
felt alone here amid a new generation : and that his 
sober, daily wish was, that it might please God soon 
to take him where he would see them again : espe- 
cially that he might see again his little sister, — the 
little sister that staid in his memory always the bright 
little girl, — whom he had not seen for more than 
ninety years. He would not have lived alway : Any- 
thing but that : and apart from all unreal sentimen- 
talism, even so is it with many more. Even if there 
be many ties here, and much to be thankful for : even 



Soberly Weighed. 305 



though willing thankfully to wait God's good time : we 
could not make up our mind never to see again the 
first faces we remember, the kindest we ever knew : 
those to whom it was the bitterness of death to leave 
us behind them. As we live on through the years 
of life, the ties to this world grow fewer, and the 
ties to the other grow many : most of those who 
were dear come to be gathered there. Wherefore 
we will wait our appointed time : we hope to be 
allowed to do our work : but we shall oftentimes 
remember how the Family is in heaven and earth ; 
and not desire always to live where we are parted 
from the best of it. Changed, greatly changed, those 
who have gone before must be : but the very same 
beings still ; and where changed, changed only for the 
better. And, forasmuch as the kind affections which 
bound them to us when in this life were the very best 
things in them, and the things in which the most of God's 
Image lingered, — these, assuredly, will be unchanged, 
save that they will be far warmer and deeper. 

And so, at last, we come to the great essential 

attraction of the better world : the best and strongest 

reason by far why the believer should, humbly and 

earnestly, take for his own these words of my text. By 

the necessity of our spiritual being, we never can be 

right, never satisfied, never truly at rest and content, 

till we are with our Saviour. Everything else can do 

no more than pacify the craving nature within us for 

u 



306 



This Life and the Next 



a little while : it is a perfectly assured fact that the 
soul of man cannot find its satisfying portion any- 
where save in God. Now, only above can we M see 
the King in His beauty : " and be entirely content in 
that Beatific Vision. Our Blessed Redeemer is 
there : and imperfectly as we may feel it in our hearts, 
still we know it as a fact beyond all question, that if 
we were with Him, it would be well with us. And to 
live always in this world would be in a true sense 
separation from Him. Present in the body is absent 
from the Lord. And to depart and be with Christ is 
far better. I grant you, that when we look about us. 
and look in upon ourselves, our souls so worldly, so 
void of spiritual elevation, so careful and troubled 
about a thousand petty little things, and with so little 
true desire and longing after God, thirsting for Him 
as a thirsty land for the gracious rain, — all this some* 
times seems very unreal. Even the best believers 
among us must bitterly lament that, many days, there 
is such an absence of anything like thirsting after God. 
Yet we know that it is a test of our spiritual condition 
if in some degree we can take it in, that the essential 
element in the happiness of Heaven, — the thing that 
makes it sure that the soul entering Heaven will be 
able to say for the very first time since the burden of 
conscious life was laid on it. Xow I am perfectly 
happy, — is, that in Heaven blest souls are * for ever 
with the Lord." The things we have already thought 
of are all well : but it is not freedom from worldly 



Soberly Weighed. 



SO? 



sorrow, — not even deliverance from sin. — not en- 
nobled powers, — not happy meetings where partings 
are unknown, — though all these are well, — not these 
that make the Heaven which the gospel holds out to 
man's hopes ! It is our Saviour Himself Who can 
give us rest ; rest that is complete, and that leaves 
nothing more to be longed for. 

It is enough now to mention this great truth briefly: 
for I have many times pressed it upon you before ; and 
sought to explain it at length, in so far as we can 
explain it. 

Well, thinking of it, do we feel that we do not care 
for that Heaven ; that it is not the thing we want at 
all ? If we feel that, let us honestly say it. But then 
what need there is that we be vitally changed, — made 
indeed new creatures ; if while we remain what we are 
we are such, that the Christian Heaven would not 
make us happy ! For then there is no place in this 
Universe that can make us so. If we have no relish 
for this stream of bliss, then there is no stream at 
which we can drink at all. Broken cisterns are all 
else ] or even if they satisfy for a little, yet whosoever 
drinks of them shall thirst again. Only in one place 
is there the living water, of which whoso drinks shall 
thirst no more. And if we do not now care for that, 
what can we do but pray the Holy Spirit so to renew 
us, so to sanctify us, that we may come to know it 
for what it is indeed ; and to see the Saviour to be 
our all in all ! 



3oS 



This Life and the Next 



And now, looking back on all that has been said 
this morning towards the weighing of the two lives, 
the present and the future, how does it all affect us ? 
I dare say the real feeling of many is, Well, all that is 
quite true ; yet we lean to the warm precincts of the 
cheerful clay. Heaven is far better than this : yet we 
should like to stay here as long as we can, Let not 
the feeling be blamed. It has pleased God, for wise 
reasons, to implant in us this clinging to the mortal 
life : and perhaps there is deeper meaning than that 
which first meets us in the words of Scripture, " The 
earth He hath given to the children of men. ;; For to 
that our natural tendencies all gravitate; and only grace 
from above, and vivid faith, can give us, even in a 
lowly degree, the victory that overcometh the world. 
But it is good to see, what surely to-day we have seen, 
plainly how we ought to feel ; even if we know we 
cannot feel so, save in temporary seasons of special 
elevation. And though we have sought, in this dis- 
course, to weigh the seen and unseen quietly and 
calmly, we may well wish that it might be vouchsafed 
us to catch some humble measure of that longing for 
the Better Country which has been reached by the best 
of the Race : — that longing for the Golden City, the 
Xew Jerusalem, where strangers and pilgrims in this 
world are at Home at last. Little we know of it, even 
after all that is written : " Eye hath not seen, nor ear 
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the 
things which God hath prepared for them that love 



Soberly Weighed. 309 



Him." Doubtless it is well that it be so. Yet we 
may fitly ask that we may be delivered from our own 
doubts and fears. 



" O could we make our doubts remove. — 
These gloomy doubts that rise ; — 
And see the Canaan that we love, 
With unbe clouded eyes : 

" Could we but climb where Moses stood, 
And view the landscape o'er, 
Xot Jordan's stream, nor death's cold rloc<L 
Should fright us from the shore ! w 




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